- Publisher |
- The Conversation
- Media Type |
- audio
- Podknife tags |
- Ideas,
- News & Politics,
- Science & Medicine
- Categories Via RSS |
- News & Politics
This podcast currently has no reviews.
Submit Review
20200219-11017-fhff9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C23%2C5143%2C3218&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip">
DAVID CROSLING/AAPCaptain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series here and an interactive here.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware the podcast accompanying this story contains the names of people who are deceased.
It’s 250 years since Captain James Cook set foot in Australia, and there’s a growing push to fully acknowledge the violence of Australia’s colonial past.
On today’s episode of the podcast, historian Kate Darian-Smith of the University of Tasmania explains that the way Australia has commemorated Cook’s arrival has changed over time – from military displays in 1870 to waning interest in Cook in the 1950s, followed by the fever-pitch celebrations of 1970.
Now, though, a more nuanced debate is required, she says, adding that it’s time to discuss the violence that Cook’s crew meted out to Indigenous people after stepping ashore at Botany Bay.
“I think discussing those violent moments is quite confronting for many Australians, but also sits within wider discussions about Aboriginal rights and equality in today’s Australia,” Darian-Smith told The Conversation’s Phoebe Roth.
In her companion essay here, co-authored with Katrina Schlunke, Darian-Smith argues many of the popular “re-enactments” of national “foundation moments” in Australia’s past have elements of fantasy, compressing time and history into palatable narratives for mainstream Australia.
New to podcasts?
Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here.
Additional audio credits
Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks.
Podcast episode recorded by Phoebe Roth and edited by Sophia Morris.
Tasfilm report on the 1970 commemorations of Cook’s arrival.
1970 news report of protest.
Lead image
David Crosling/AAP
Read more: As we celebrate the rediscovery of the Endeavour let's acknowledge its complicated legacy
20200204-41490-vadwoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3818%2C1954&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip">
Uncle Fred Deeral as little old man in the film The Message, by Zakpage, to be shown at the National Museum of Australia in April. Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage, Author provided (no reuse)Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series here and an interactive here.
Editor’s note: This is an edited transcript of an interview with John Maynard for our podcast Trust Me, I’m An Expert. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of deceased people.
There are a multitude of Aboriginal oral memories about Captain James Cook, right across the continent.
As the Rose-Captain-Cook.pdf">research from Deborah Bird Rose shows, many Aboriginal people in remote locations are certainly under the impression that Cook came there as well, shooting people in a kind of Cook-led invasion of Australia. Many of these communities, of course, never met James Cook; the man never even went there.
But the deep impact of James Cook that spread across the country and he came to represent the bogeyman for Aboriginal Australia.
Even back in the Protection and Welfare Board days, a government car would turn up and Aboriginal people would be running around screaming, “Lookie, lookie, here comes Cookie!”
I wrote about Uncle Ray Rose, sadly recently departed, who’d had a stroke. Someone said, “How do you feel?” And he said, “No good. I’m Captain Cooked.”
Cook, wherever he went up the coast, was giving names where names already existed. Yuin oral memory in the south coast of NSW gives the example of what they called Gulaga and Cook called “Mount Dromedary”:
[…] that name can be seen as the first of the changes that come for our people […] Cook’s maps were very good, but they did not show our names for places. He didn’t ask us.
Cook has been incorporated into songs, jokes, stories and Aboriginal oral histories right across the country.
Why? I think it’s an Aboriginal response to the way we’ve been taught about our history.
Myth-making persists but a shift is underway
I came through a school system of the 50s and 60s, and we weren’t weren’t even mentioned in the history books except as a people belonging to the Stone Age or as a dying race.
It was all about discoverers, explorers, settlers and Phar Lap or Don Bradman. But us Aboriginal people? Not there.
We had this high exposure of the public celebration of Cook, the statues of Cook, the reenactments of Cook – it was really in your face. For Aboriginal people, how do we make sense of all of this, faced with the reality of our experience and the catastrophic impact?
We’ve got to make sense of it the best way we can, and I think that’s why Cook turns up in so many oral histories.
I think wider Australia is moving towards a more balanced understanding of our history. Lots of people now recognise the richest cultural treasure the country possesses is 65,000 years of Aboriginal cultural connection to this continent.
That’s unlike anywhere else in the world. I mean no disrespect, but 250 years is a drop in a lake compared to 65,000 years. From our perspective, in fact, we’ve always been here. Our people came out of the Dreamtime of the creative ancestors and lived and kept the Earth as it was in the very first day.
With global warming, rising sea levels, rising temperatures and catastrophic storms, Aboriginal people did keep the Earth as it was in the very first day to ensure that it was passed to each surviving generation.
There was going to be a (now-cancelled) circumnavigation of Australia in the official proceedings this year, which the prime minister supported. But James Cook didn’t circumnavigate Australia. He only sailed up the east coast. So that’s creating more myths again, which is a senseless way to go.
20200116-181617-1ohpsnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">
20200116-181617-1ohpsnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip">
A painting of Captain Cook and the Endeavour journal on display at the National Library of Australia.
AAP/ALAN PORRITT
‘With the consent of the Natives to take possession’
Personally, I have high regard for James Cook as a navigator, as a cartographer, and certainly as an inspiring captain of his crew. He encouraged incredible loyalty among those that sailed with him on those three voyages. And that has to be recognised.
But against that, of course, is the reality that he was given secret instructions by the Navy to:
With the consent of the Natives to take possession of the convenient situations in the country in the name of the king of Great Britain.
Well, consent was never given. When they went ashore at Botany Bay, two Aboriginal men brandished spears and made it quite clear they didn’t want him there. Those men were wounded and Cook was one of those firing a musket.
There was no gaining any consent when he sailed on to Possession Island and planted that flag down. Totally the opposite, in fact.
And the most insightful viewpoint is from Cook himself, who wrote that:
all they seem’d to want was for us to be gone.
Cook’s background gave him insight
James Cook wasn’t your normal British naval officer of that time period. To get into such a position, you normally had to be born into the right family, to come from money and privilege.
James Cook was none of those things. He came from a poor family. His father was a labourer. Cook got to where he was by skill, endeavour, and, unquestionably, because he was a very smart man and brilliant at sea. But it’s also from that background that he’s able to offer insight.
There’s an incredible quotation of Cook’s where he says of Aboriginal people:
They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition… they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholsome Air.
Now, Cook is comparing what he is seeing in Australia with life back Britain, where there is an incredible amount of inequality. London, at the time, was filthy. Sewerage pouring through the streets. Disease was rife. Underprivilege is everywhere.
In Australia, though, Cook sees what to him looks like this incredible egalitarian society and it makes an impact on him because of where he comes from.
But deeper misunderstandings persisted. In what’s now called Cooktown there are, at first, amicable relationships with the Guugu Yimithirr people, but when they come aboard the Endeavour they see this incredible profusion of turtles that the crew has captured.
They’re probably thinking, “these are our turtles.” They would quite happily share some of those turtles but the Bristish response is: you get none.
So the Guugu Yimithirr people go off the ship and set the grass on fire. Eventually, there’s a kind of peace settlement but the incident reveals a complete blindness on the part of the British to the idea of reciprocity in Aboriginal society.
Read more: 'They are all dead': for Indigenous people, Cook's voyage of 'discovery' was a ghostly visitation
A collision of catastrophic proportions
The impact of 1770 has never eased for Aboriginal people. It was a collision of catastrophic proportions. The whole impact of 1788 – of invasion, dispossession, cultural destruction, occupation onto assimilation, segregation – all of these things that came after 1770.
Anything you want to measure – Aboriginal health, education, employment, housing, youth suicide, incarceration – we have the worst stats. That has been a continuation, a reality of the failure of government to recognise what has happened in the past and actually do something about it in the present to fix it for the future.
We’ve had decades and decades of governments saying to us, “We know what’s best for you.” But the fact is that when it comes to Aboriginal well being, the only people to listen to are Aboriginal people and we’ve never been put in the position.
We’ve been raising our voices for a long time now, but some people see that as a threat and are not prepared to listen.
An honest reckoning of the reality of Cook and what came after won’t heal things overnight. But it’s a starting point, from which we can join hands and walk together toward a shared future.
A balanced understanding of the past will help us build a future – it is of critical importance.
New to podcasts?
Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here.
Additional audio credits
Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks.
Marimba On the Loose by Daniel Birch, from Free Music Archive.
Podcast episode recorded and edited by Sunanda Creagh.
Lead image
Uncle Fred Deeral as little old man in the film The Message, a film by Zakpage, to be shown at the National Museum of Australia in April. Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage.
20200219-10976-7514dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C7337%2C4891&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip">
ShutterstockIn today’s episode, Clare Collins, a Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle, explains how our diets might need to change depending on what stage of life we’re in.
The Conversation’s Phoebe Roth started by asking: what should kids be eating and how much should parents worry about children eating vegetables?
An edited transcript is below.
New to podcasts?
Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here.
Additional audio credits
Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks.
Podcast episode recorded by Phoebe Roth and edited by Sophia Morris.
Lead image
Shutterstock
Edited transcript
Clare Collins: Parents worry so much about what children eat. But the rule of thumb is if they’re growing well, then you don’t need to worry. They are eating enough food.
And the way you know if they’re growing well is: if you take their baby book or you have a growth chart on your wall and you plot their height and weight regularly, you’ll be able to see if they’re following one of the lines on the growth chart. And that’s the best indicator.
The other thing that’s worth remembering is that a well child won’t starve themselves. But for children, their appetite is more variable than an adult. With us, we go, “Well, 12 o'clock, better eat lunch,” or “Oh, I’m awake, better have breakfast now because I’m going to be busy at work later.” But for children, they’re much more responsive to their internal cues.
And the younger the child, the more variable their appetite. So a typical thing is, a two or three year old might eat a massive breakfast and tomorrow they don’t eat any. At daycare, they might eat a huge lunch or none at all. And then the same thing happens at dinner. So if your child’s in daycare, you might want to look in the book or ask the staff, did they eat afternoon tea and lunch today? And that’ll give you a little bit of a guide as to whether you should be encouraging them to eat a little bit more dinner or just go, well, they had just had a massive afternoon tea, so they’re not really going to be hungry.
The other thing with children around the evening meal is that they often run out of steam by the end of the day. So having the evening meal as early as is practical. And for a young child, that may mean they’re having their dinner at five o'clock. And then what they eat at the family meal time is an optional extra. Because if you make them wait till 6 or 7pm, they’re over it and dinner becomes a nightmare.
The other thing that we know about kids, in terms of should we worry about them not eating vegetables, is we’ve actually done some research on this. And we found for kids around the age of three, the biggest predictor of their vegetable intake was not what mum had eaten in pregnancy. It was actually what the parents were eating now. So if you really want your children to eat heaps of veggies, it’s monkey-see-monkey-do, then that means we’ve got to look at how much we love our broccoli, mum and dad. And then that will make a big difference.
The other factor that comes into vegetable intake is genetics. And about 25% of people are what are called “super tasters”. That means they have got extra taste buds. And I wrote an article about this on The Conversation, actually. And so they taste things like the brassicas family – so Brussels sprouts, cauliflower – they taste it as more bitter than people who were either, not super tasters or, you know, have less taste buds. But more good news: even if you’re a super taster, if you don’t give up and you have repeated exposure, you even overcome that. So there’s no excuse for not liking your cauliflower.
Read more: How much food should my child be eating? And how can I get them to eat more healthily?
Phoebe Roth: That’s really interesting. I had no idea about a lot of that. So you started to touch on my next question, but I wonder if there are any other tips you’ve got. I was going to ask, what does the evidence say works for developing healthy eating habits during childhood or for kids if you’re worried perhaps they’re not eating as well as they should be.
Clare Collins: The key thing for developing healthy eating habits in childhood is not giving up and trying not to stress. So really accepting there is variability. Studies have been done on toddler intake and shown that over 24 hours they pretty much eat about the same total energy intake. But if you look meal to meal, hugely variable, like I mentioned.
The other key time when I think parents, you know, the food wars can start around 18 months and then people go, you know, “the terrible twos, they just never eat anything!” Well, if you want to avoid the food wars, then around 18 months, just step back a little bit and observe how much food is your child usually eating, because up until 18 months, babies have tripled their birth weight. So, you know, born around, say you’re around three kilos, well around six months you’ll be six kilos and around 18 months you’ll be nine kilos. Now, if in the next 18 months you tripled your birth weight again, what would that be? Nine, 18, 36 kilos. Around that. So around 18 months, depending on a child’s activity, they can actually go through a period of time where their energy needs are relatively less and you are going “No, last month they’d eat a whole punnet of blueberries!” and then you may start trying to force feed them. That’s where the beginnings of the food wars can start. So, trusting, like I said, that a well child will not starve themselves.
It can be different if the child has medical requirements and need for a therapeutic diet. That’s a whole separate kettle of fish and you’d be needing to talk to your GP, maybe be referred to a dietitian for specific problems or if there’s actual feeding problems, a speech pathologist.
So for the average child, it is about exposure, letting them feed themselves, not force feeding them and rewarding the behaviour that you want to see. So picture this: dinner time at the table. One child chasing those veggies around the plate with a fork and the other child eating up the foods that they’re really hungry for. If you focus on the child doing the “right thing” – you know, “I love the way, Jodi, you’re eating that broccoli and carrots,” rather than, “hey, Sammy, you’re going to sit there til every pea has disappeared off your plate” – well, then you’re reinforcing that vegetables are disgusting. So if you focus on the behaviours you want to see, then the other children start to recognise that, “oh, I only get attention if I’m doing the ‘right thing’. ” So reward the behaviour you want to see.
Most of the dinner is consumed in 20 minutes. So don’t make the meals drawn out. And for kids with a smaller appetite, having healthy snacks will make up for what’s not eaten within 20 minutes.
Read more: Five things parents can do to improve their children's eating patterns
Phoebe Roth: Okay, great. And today we’re discussing, obviously, the Australian Dietary Guidelines and sort of adapting diet at each stage of life. And so I wanted to know at which of life’s different stages might our dietary needs change? We’ve now talked about kids, but what about, say, for pregnant women, women going through menopause and any others?
Clare Collins: Okay. For boys and girls, their dietary needs stay about the same until adolescence. And then that’s the first time the next alarm bells ring. Once girls start menstruating then their iron requirements are much, much greater. Boys, if they’re super active and they have a big increase in lean body mass – so it’s kind of like, you know, if you go from a little car to a big car, you need a lot more fuel – so for boys, all of a sudden they’re eating a lot more food. And meeting those nutritional requirements of adolescence is important because adolescence is also the time when teenagers typically experiment with different types of diets, you know, so they might be on a vegetarian diet or a vegan diet. So just keeping an eye on that. The key nutrients are iron – and you can get that from vegetarian foods and great articles on The Conversation about that, by the way.
And there’s also articles on The Conversation about adolescents and another typical issue that arises at adolescence, where parents are going “I wonder if this is a dietary problem” is diet and acne. And I’ve actually written on that for The Conversation.
And your nutrient needs for women change again during pregnancy and breastfeeding. The growing baby is a pretty good sponge. So it’s really the mum’s nutritional status that’s most at risk and the baby will be doing its best to grow with whatever fuel’s available. But to optimise the baby’s growth and development, you do want to have a nutritious dietary pattern. But you don’t need as much extra food and nutrients as you think. Basically, it’s equivalent to an extra tub of yoghurt and a salad sandwich to meet your extra requirements. But some diet-related problems do kick off in pregnancy like heartburn or developing constipation. And, you know, pregnant women and this happened to me as well, during pregnancy, go, hey, how come this is happening? Well, during pregnancy, there are hormonal changes to essentially slow down your transit time in your gut to give your body the best chance of getting any nutrients out of the food so to support the pregnancy.
And so eating healthily in pregnancy is really important, but you may need a boost in your dietary fibre intake. And one of the articles I’ve written for The Conversation is on how to manage constipation. And there’s a whole hierarchy of nutrition things you can do. And beyond that, then you really do need to mention it to your obstetrician or your GP in case you need some other type of like medicinal help. And then it’s got to make sure it’s something that’s safe for pregnancy. And you do need to talk to them about that.
Read more: Health Check: what to eat and avoid during pregnancy
Phoebe Roth: Sure. Are there any other life stages where you might need to think about changing your diet? What if, say, you develop a particular health condition?
Clare Collins: If you develop a particular health condition, then absolutely. The most common diet-related health conditions in Australia is type 2 diabetes. And some people are now being diagnosed with pre-diabetes, which is like an alarm bell and gives you a chance to change your dietary patterns and your lifestyle behaviours like physical activity so that you don’t go on to develop type 2 diabetes. And then the other one is heart disease. Both of those have dietary components.
So for type 2 diabetes, you’re likely to moderate the type and amount of carbohydrate. And for heart disease, there’s a whole range of bioactive foods that you can boost your intake of – whole grains, vegetables and fruit, reducing your saturated fat intake. And, you know, you can find articles about all of those things on The Conversation.
But if you read those and you go, oh, wow, it’s way more complex than I thought or I really would like some personalised advice, then ask your GP to refer you to an Accredited Practising Dietitian and get a personalised plan.
Phoebe Roth: Yeah, absolutely. And the other one is menopause. I know you’re writing an article for us coming up on menopause and whether there are specific things you need to keep in mind regarding your diet.
Clare Collins: Menopause is really unfair because one of my colleagues, Lauren Williams, who’s co-authoring the article and she’s from Griffith University up there on the Gold Coast, is her whole PhD research was on this topic and she studied the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health and followed the women as they transitioned through menopause. And the average weight gain is about two and a half kilos.
But even that is not the most unfair aspect of menopause. What she discovered is that there’s no discount, if you like, on gaining weight, if you lived a healthy lifestyle already, that all women are prone to weight gain during menopause. And it’s a combination of the hormonal changes amplified by life changes. And some of those life changes are that for most women, the physical work actually reduces at that time. You know, the house might be less people living in your house and you don’t have to do as much housework.
For many women, you have more disposable income. So you actually can go out a little bit more, spend more money on eating out. And the other thing is it’s a life stage where alcohol intake increases in women. You know, the perfect storm. You know, you had this lovely, healthy lifestyle and then you gained weight.
But what she also found, which is the important message, is that during that menopausal transition, women who changed something, they went, “Right. I’m going to beat this weight gain.” And they decided to eat more vegetables or develop new, healthier recipes or walk a lot more. They did not gain that average two point, 2.5-ish kilos.
As much as I really think that sucks that we gain weight during menopause, I’m really pleased to know that it’s not inevitable, but it’s kind of like, you know, it’s like having to do a spring clean on your life stage patterns, on your dietary patterns and on your physical activity. And you can get through menopause in a healthy weight and with a healthy lifestyle and be healthier. But we have to be on guard. So unfair.
Read more: Health Check: six tips for losing weight without fad diets
Phoebe Roth: So in the healthy eating side of things, would that just be sort of following the Australian Dietary Guidelines?
Clare Collins: Well, yes, but we need to make a little note of caution about the Dietary Guidelines. And that is not many people eat like the Australian Dietary Guidelines. In fact, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare modelled what would happen if people did eat five serves of vegetables and two serves of fruit and had their whole grains and used reduced fat dairy and, you know, chose the leanest forms of protein.
They model that if everyone in Australia tomorrow started eating like the recommendations found in the Australian Dietary Guidelines, that heart disease rates would drop by 62% and that diabetes rates would drop by – type 2 diabetes rates, I should say – would drop by around 40%. That’s not going to happen. People aren’t going to do that. And we know that only 3 out of 100 Australians eat five serves of vegetables a day.
So, yes, definitely eat more like the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating and the Australian Dietary Guidelines, but a good place you can start is the Healthy Eating Quiz. This is a short quiz that takes less than 10 minutes to do. It’s free and it’s online. It rates your dietary patterns compared to recommendations in the Australian Dietary Guidelines. And that now links to a really fun website – we think it’s fun anyway because we invented it – called No Money, No Time. It’s got recipe recommendations to match with your Healthy Eating Quiz report.
We’ve set up some fun filters on there. So if you’ve only got a basic kitchen and you’ve got a microwave and just one pot, you can filter it for recipes matching your kitchen equipment. And we also added this other filter that allows you to say what your healthy lifestyle goals are. And we’ve catered for all ages on that. Some people told us their goal was to have glowing skin. And some people said, I want to do better in my sport. And some people have said I want to manage my weight. So you can further tailor the recipes for that. So No Money, No Time and the Healthy Eating Quiz. And that’s our way of trying to help Australians eat a little bit more healthy and feel better and have their health improve as well.
Read more: Got pre-diabetes? Here's five things to eat or avoid to prevent type 2 diabetes
Phoebe Roth: I am already keen to jump on that straight after this and give it a try. Great. So the Dietary Guidelines, would you say they’re a really good resource and reference point, but possibly not a one size fits all approach?
Clare Collins: Absolutely. And there are some resources on the government websites called Eat for Health, and there are some resources on that. And they are designed for the predominantly healthy Australian population while recognising that overweight and obesity are relatively common and that people are commonly seeking extra advice for things like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. There’s certainly a good first place to stop. But as I mentioned, you may need extra specialised help if you have some of those common chronic diseases. And a good place to start to find out is with a health check up with your general practitioner who can do a heart health check and check your blood pressure. And you know, if you don’t have scales at home, they can do a check on your weight. But more important than that is checking on your blood to see what your cholesterol level is and whether your blood sugar levels are high, indicating you’re at a higher risk for type 2 diabetes.
Phoebe Roth: So what do people need to consider to ensure they’re following the right diet for their individual circumstances or for their stage of life?
Clare Collins: I think the key thing, when it comes to diet-related health or nutrition-related health is knowing what your risk factors are for these chronic conditions. And really to know those, you do need to check in with a health professional, with your general practitioner. You might be a lucky person who has the genes that mean you have wonderful blood sugar levels and you have wonderful cholesterol levels and your blood pressure’s great. Then that would essentially mean that you’re doing the right things for your genes and for your body. But a check-up with your GP is usually a chance to see, you know, what does need to be tweaked in my diet? One of the things about high blood pressure is that it’s really common, but there’s absolutely no signs or symptoms. So until you get it checked by your GP, you wouldn’t even know.
Phoebe Roth: What about for older people? What sort of things do they need to consider about diet?
Clare Collins: Once you start approaching 75 and above, then it’s interesting that your nutrition requirements and your dietary requirements start to shift a little bit. Once you get older, the focus moves to trying not to lose your muscle tissue. There’s a word for that malnutrition of older age and it’s called sarcopenia. And it’s really important. And so as you age to protect your body from sarcopenia, your protein requirements actually start to go up.
And people have this image of, “Oh, you know older people. They just need a cup of tea and a piece of toast.” Well, they actually don’t. They might need their coffee made on milk or they might need a nutritional supplement if their appetite’s really poor. And this is another time where you may need specialised nutrition advice. If there’s any underlying medical conditions or if the older people in your family are in a nursing home, you may need to talk to the nursing home staff about whether they’re meeting their nutritional requirements or not.
As you age physical activity and because your muscle mass decreases, your total energy intake reduces. And it’s a little bit like going from the big car down to the smaller car. You still need the same amounts of vitamins and minerals and things we call phytonutrients. You know, they’re not a vitamin or they’re not a mineral, but they help your body run better. You still need the same amount of them, but you need them in less energy. So there’s like less room for error. So the tea and toast isn’t adequate, you know, for grandma or granddad, for the older person. They’re having nutritious and nutrient dense foods.
So, you know, vegetable soup, so to put all the vegetables in, in the right texture that looks appealing is really important. The other thing as you get older is that your taste buds change. You can have less. Some of your taste buds start to decline. And so flavouring food more and to the way, you know, Nanna or Grandpa like it rather than the way you like it is really important. So it can be a life stage where for people, if they think, “Gee, food just doesn’t taste as good anymore, then trying out what herbs, spices and flavourings they like and using those to replace salt.
Because as you age you’re more prone to high blood pressure and you’re also more prone to developing diabetes. So nutrition remains important right through your life. And it’s a really important part of our social lives.
So I think, you know, if I had one final message, it’s: no matter what you do or how busy you are, still finding that time to cook, prepare and eat with other people is a really important way of preserving your own family’s food culture and looking after the nutrition-related health and the social well-being of everyone in your family.
Phoebe Roth: And the last question I have, I wonder if – it goes into all ages, for anyone that’s trying to eat healthy and follow a healthy diet – where do superfoods fit in? I know that there may not be one answer to fit all, but I think that that’s kind of a question people grapple with it when the next fad is right in front of them. And you know, what do they do? Should they eat this? Should they go out and buy it?
Clare Collins: Fad diets are just so ongoing and regular that we often write articles for The Conversation about them. But you know, my thing about superfoods is that there are super foods, there’s heaps of them and they’re actually all in the supermarket.
And when you walk in the supermarket – this is one way supermarket design does try and help us eat healthy – you walk smack bang into the super food section and they’re right there. They don’t have packages. They don’t have labels. But it’s that wide variety of vegetables and fruit. And I think if there was one important thing to remember, when you go to the supermarket every week when you went to the supermarket or you enter a market, look at those vegetable and fruits and which one has not been in your trolley, you know, in the last couple of weeks? And invite them in. Some of the research that we’ve done shows that the variety of vegetables and fruit, but particularly the variety of vegetables, predicts your long term health care costs.
And we’ve shown that in a research study over 15 years on the Australian Longitudinal study on Women’s Health. And lots of the research we’ve been doing is showing that the variety of those foods that belong to the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating in the Australian Dietary Guidelines, that it’s actually those nutrient-rich foods that predict your nutrient intake and then decide whether you’re on a path for health or you’re not on a path for health. You’re on a path for poor health.
So going for variety in your whole grains, your vegetables, your fruits, your sources of protein, which includes meat, poultry, fish and then all the wonderful vegetarian sources and whole grains. Collectively, those things make up a healthy diet pattern. They make up you when you eat them. And then that determines whether you’re going to be healthy or less healthy.
Read more: Had pre-eclampsia in pregnancy? These 5 things will lower your risk of heart disease
Phoebe Roth: Is there anything else you want to talk about that we didn’t touch on?
Clare Collins: The only thing is I hope people don’t feel alone when it comes to nutrition. Go and have a look at No Money, No Time. Not only have we loaded that website up with lots of recipes, we’ve also loaded up with lots of information, hacks and myths. We’ve linked a lot of The Conversation articles to it. And then the other place to go for good information is go to The Conversation and type in nutrition in the search bar. And you’ll see lots of the articles that myself, my team and lots of other academics from other universities around Australia have written on food and nutrition.
Phoebe Roth: Thank you so much, Clare, for joining us on Trust Me, I’m An Expert today. It’s been great talking to you again.
Clare Collins: Thank you. It’s my absolute pleasure.
20200409-55860-2678ze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1023%2C0%2C745%2C962&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip"> Michelle Grattan talks with MPs Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Victoria), Fiona Martin (Reid, NSW), Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Victoria) and Helen Haines (Indi, Victoria) about how they do their job during the pandemic.
They discuss the operation of their electorate offices in light of isolation requirements, and recount how the crisis is affecting their constituents.
New to podcasts?
Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Politics with Michelle Grattan on Pocket Casts).
You can also hear it on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Politics with Michelle Grattan.
Additional audio
A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
20200403-74858-1ib7fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C69%2C5121%2C2957&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip">
AAP/EPA/ANDY RAINWhat does the COVID-19 pandemic sound like?
For this episode, Dallas Rogers – a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney – asked academic colleagues from all over the world to open up the voice recorder on their phones and record a two minute report from the field about their city.
Many of those who responded to the call are struggling, just like us, to make sense of their experience in the COVID-19 city.
The resulting stories reflect on hygiene, disease, quarantine, social control and the urban environment from cities around the world.
If you want to hear all the stories in full, you can find them here, and read more about the project here.
Contributors
Roger Keil (@rkeil), Professor at York University
Jason Byrne (@CityByrne), Professor at the University of Tasmania
iveson.html">Kurt Iveson (@kurtiveson), Associate Professor at the University of Sydney
Tanja Dreher (@TanjaDreher), Associate Professor at the University of NSW
Carolyn Whitzman (@CWhitzman), Professor and Bank of Montreal Women’s Studies Scholar at the University of Ottawa
alizadeh.html?apcode=ACADPROFILE300808">Tooran Alizadeh (@DrTooran), Associate Professor at the University of Sydney
mccann.html">Eugene McCann (@EJMcCann), Professor at Simon Fraser University
Beth Watts (@BethWatts494), a Senior Research Fellow at Heriot-Watt University
Amanda Kass (@Amanda_Kass), PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Elle Davidson, Aboriginal Planning Lecturer at the University of Sydney
Creighton Connolly (@Creighton88), Senior Lecturer at the University of Lincoln
dombroski.html">Kelly Dombroski (@DombroskiKelly), Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury
Kate Murray (@katiemelbourne), Connected Cities Lab at the University of Melbourne
Em Dale (@carnivoresetal), at Oxford University
Matt Novacevski (@places_calling), PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne
Mirjam Büdenbender (@MBuedenbender), advisor to the chair of the social-democratic parliamentary group in Berlin
Natalie Osborne (@DrNatOsborne), Lecturer at Griffith University
Ash Alam (@urbanmargin), Lecturer at University of Otago
Cameron Murray (@DrCameronMurray), Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Sydney
siddabathuni-807.html">Deepti Prasad (@Deepti_Prasad_), PhD candidate at the University of Sydney
Madeleine Pill (@pillmad), Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield
Matt Wade, (@geminidluxe), Post-doctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore is with Renae Johnson, an independent artist, in Singapore
Susan Caldis (@SusanCaldis), PhD candidate at Macquarie University
repository.uwa.edu.au/en/persons/paul-maginn">Paul Maginn (@Planographer), Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia
Music Credits
Crop circles by Craft Case, Inspri8ion by Pulsed, The city below by Marten Moses, Someone else’s memories by So Vea. https://www.epidemicsound.com/
Theme beats by Unkle Ho from Elefant Traks.
Production credits
Project coordinated by Dallas Rogers.
Audio edited by Miles P. Herbert, with additional audio editing by Wes Mountain.
Lead image
AAP/EPA/ANDY RAIN
Read more: Coronavirus is stressful. Here are some ways to cope with the anxiety
20200402-74885-oun68q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1085%2C636&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip"> Author provided (No reuse)In this special hour long podcast presented by Mark Evans, professor of governance and director of Democracy 2025, the panel discusses Australian democracy with Emeritus Professor Ian Chubb and Michelle Grattan.
The panel dissects the Australian trust in government, compared with other modern democracies around the world. Drawing on the world values survey,report6.pdf"> the report notes the sharp focus on the quality of democratic governance, especially in the time of global crisis caused by coronavirus.
New to podcasts?
Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Politics with Michelle Grattan on Pocket Casts).
You can also hear it on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Politics with Michelle Grattan.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
20200326-168894-j66pvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=278%2C0%2C1718%2C1311&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip">
Dave Hunt/AAPThe coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19, has infected nearly half a million people and taken the lives of more than 21,200.
No person in Australia is more qualified to speak on the science of this global pandemic than Professor Peter Doherty. Professor Doherty was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 1996 for his work studying the immune system. The Doherty Institute, now at the forefront of Australian research on the coronavirus, bears his name.
In this episode of Politics with Michelle Grattan, Professor Doherty discusses the particulars of the pandemic - including how controlling this pandemic differs from that of other illnesses:
“It’s a problem of dealing with a respiratory infection,” he said.
“It’s different from, say, AIDS. We can all modify the way we behave in the sexual sense, but we can’t decide not to breathe. And so it’s very important that we keep that social distancing right at the front of our mind. In fact, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve seen is, think [as if] you’ve already got it and you don’t want to transmit it to anybody else. And if you think like that, you’ll protect yourself. ”
Scientists from The Doherty Institute were the first to successfully grow the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) from a patient sample. According to Professor Doherty, a COVID-19 vaccine could be available within 12 to 18 months.
“There are a few new concerns from experiments with the earlier SARS and MERS viruses in lab animals…that some vaccine formulations could give you what we call a bit of immunopathology, and even make the disease worse,” he said.
“So we have to be careful with the vaccine. But there’s also good evidence that a safe SARS vaccine worked well in monkeys. Targeting the same protein, the first COVID-19 vaccine product from the University of Queensland has already gone into lab animals.”
Listen to the full podcast for more from Professor Doherty, including how his research and institution is furthering the vaccination effort, how the virus affects the body and the future of the crisis.
Transcript (edited for clarity)
Michelle Grattan: Experts have been much quoted in the coronavirus crisis, but no one has better qualifications on this subject than Peter Doherty. His research on the immune system won him the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1996, and he’s authored a book titled Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know. The highly respected Doherty Institute is named in his honour and he is its patron. The institute is where much of the vital Australian research on the virus is being done. Peter Doherty joins us today from his home in Melbourne. Please forgive the audio not being ideal from a home telephone.
Peter Doherty, just before we drill down into the detail, let me ask you, what does everyone need to know about a pandemic? What would be your most urgent messages?
Peter Doherty: With the pandemic the necessity is to listen to what’s being said by the relevant authorities, the public health people, and in this case, who is seeing a lot of that articulated by the prime minister, the chief medical officer, and state premiers and their representatives as well. So listen to what’s being said. Take notice and follow the instructions. MG: Mind you, one of the features I speak of, what’s been going on is that not all the authorities are on the same page. There is a difference, including among the experts, isn’t there?
PD: There’s differences of opinion re some of the policy issues. I don’t think there’s much difference of opinion or much difference space anywhere between the various scientists and so forth. But policy, of course is a much more difficult issue and I do I don’t interface with that. But it’s way above my paygrade ‘policy’, I’m just a lab rat. So really there has been some confusion in messaging early on. I think that’s gradually come together because there is now a sort of national medical committee on this chaired by the prime minister. And we are a federal system and we’re all familiar with the idea that we get different messages from different states in Australia. But I think basically everyone’s much on the same page. It’s just a bit of the details might differ. But everyone is advocating, social distancing and responsible behaviour. And that’s the really important thing.
MG: Now, in this pandemic, don’t we know especially about the transmission of the virus, the infection, the mutation?
PD: We are learning very quickly, Michelle. You know, we’ve only known about this virus for at most four months. And what we’re learning is a lot about how it transmits and how readily it transmits. The initial idea is transmitted about the same level as influenza. It seems to be transmitting at a higher level and that, if anything, we give it an r-nought. That’s the number of people who are likely to be infected by any single person around two-point-five to three. And of course, people are really crowded together. One person can infect many, many more than that. And we all know the stories about the dinner party of 12 where one was positive when they arrived and all 12 were positive by the time they left.
MG: Say nothing of the wedding where I think some 36 people or thereabouts were infected.
PD: Yes. Yes. It’s the problem of dealing with a respiratory infection. You know, it’s different from, say, AIDS. We can all modify the way we behave in the sexual sense, but we can’t decide not to breathe. And so it’s very important that we keep that social distancing right at the front of our mind. In fact, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve seen is - think as though you’ve already got it and you don’t want to transmit it to anybody else. And if you think like that, you’ll protect yourself.
MG: Is it this high rate of infection that makes it a pandemic?
PD: Yes. Yes. Because it’s spread globally. We didn’t have a pandemic with SARS, the initial one , the very similar virus, but more lethal, that came up in 2002, 2003, because it just didn’t spread as effectively as this one. This one’s spreads really fast. And that’s why it’s got to a lot of countries. It’s now in one hundred and ninety six countries. The only place that SARS, the original SARS went out, of Asia, was to Toronto. And so this is an incredibly infectious virus that very readily spread by travellers and so forth. And that’s what makes it a pandemic. A pandemic means across the planet, of course. So all the people and all people are at risk here.
MG: I think we haven’t heard a lot about what’s happening in Africa. We’ve heard more about Europe and Asia. What’s the story in Africa? And when it really gets going it presumably could be particularly bad, you’d think.
PD: Absolutely. It will be terrible because you’ve got a lot of people in Africa with what we call co-morbidities, other medical problems, due to a variety of things. And what we think is that, what we know, is that if you don’t have a strong public health system and sophisticated science, you won’t be testing very extensively for it. We’re familiar with that because we’re getting calls from all over the Pacific region, and local region, to help them set up testing. But it will never be the case that there’s extensive testing in many of those communities, they just don’t have the infrastructure. So that’s one of the reasons I argued in that pandemics book that you mentioned, that basically it’s very, very important to maintain the infrastructure. So we don’t really know, but we’re pretty certain that this virus is in just about every country and without any real capacity for monitoring, the only thing they can do to try and protect themselves is social distancing.
MG: Just on this question of testing, we hear the numbers are ramping up. But surely as this spreads, you’re going to need round after round of testing, because if someone tests negative today, it doesn’t mean that he or she will be negative in a month’s time, does it?
PD: No, the main point of the testing at this stage is, I think, well, firstly to monitor the infection, but also to identify people who are definitely clinical cases of this. Now, basically, the testing we’re doing is all for the presence of virus. That is what’s called a PCR test. This is very similar to the tests that used to identify rapists. Basically, it identifies a genetic sequence and identifies that the individual has in there nose and throat, the genetic sequence of the virus, which means they’re infected. That means that we’re only detecting people with current infection. We’re not detecting people who might have been infected and recovered. For that, we need a screening antibody test to detect the footprint of an infection. That is the antibodies that have developed as their infection goes on and will now be protective. So we ask about background incidence at this stage. The Chinese are ahead of us on that. And I can talk about that if you want me to.
MG: Well, tell us. Yes. About the Chinese.
PD: Well, while the Chinese were initially reporting from Wuhan from the massive outbreak that they got onto so dramatically that they were seeing a 2.5 per cent death rate. Now, that’s pretty terrifying because the death rate for the normal influenza is about nought point one per cent. Okay. So we’re talking about twenty-five times as many people dying. Now, what wasn’t understood right at the beginning and what they, because they were so obsessed with identifying the likely transmitters and clinical cases, is that actually is a lot of really asymptomatic or completely asymptomatic infection in people who can also be carriers. And once they were able to get those figures, their estimate of the death rate has dropped from 2.5 percent to 1.4 per cent. So that’s that’s good. I mean, it means that, see, the death rate go down is good. They were initially reporting that the death rate in people from, in their 80s or something like 14 or 15 percent, well, that’s at least halved, it seems. So that, again, is good.
MG: How do you explain the differences in the case numbers between, say, Italy and Australia? Because both are first world countries, both have solid medical health systems?
PD: Well, Italy did have a fairly stringent procedures - the government here adopted early on. We’ve delayed the onset in Australia and we bought a lot of time. We’ve also got a pretty sophisticated medical laboratory scene, though, Italy has too really. But Italy didn’t take those steps and they got the disease, and in big numbers, I think they had it for a while before they even realised they had it. We’ve been doing a lot of background testing. People have been saying we’re not testing enough. Well, actually, nobody can test enough because there’s not enough reagents on the planet and all the rest of it. But we’ve been doing a lot of background testing. By international standards. And until about Tuesday of last week, even when we were testing people who were coming in to the fever clinics at Royal Melbourne Hospital, which was set up to deal with this infection or testing the people that were being sent in by their doctors, because they had some sort of respiratory disease and so forth. We were still finding less than one per cent of people positive. So that means there was very little background infection in the community in Melbourne. And if you think of the demographics and so forth in Melbourne, Melbourne is exactly the sort of place you’d expect a lot of it. Now, with respect to the disease, Sydney has been a bit ahead of us. They’ve they’ve climbed up more quickly than we have. So, of course, that’s a major portal of entry into Australia. And they all came into Australia from somewhere else initially. So we think we bought a lot of time and now we’re starting to see it ramp up. And and actually also the criteria for testing are being relaxed a bit and we’ll see more positives come up because we’re going to be testing more broadly that will sort of flatten out and and we’ll we’ll start to see a more stable situation, if you like.
MG: One argument has been that countries perhaps have should adopt the so-called herd immunity course of dealing with this virus. Could you explain how that works? And what do you think of that argument?
PD: Well, it’s the basis of all the responses, in a way. The difference is that the herd immunity argument that has been presented has been, well, let everyone get infected, take the consequences, and the sooner everybody’s infected, the sooner it will be immune or large numbers will be immune. And then the rate of transmission will drop, the risk will drop and people can get back to work. So that’s that’s the sort of argument that was being attributed to the Brits and to the Dutch. Now we all want to see herd immunity. We just want to get there a bit slower and to back up a bit. You know, you get infected with the virus, you recover from the infection, you’ve then got antibodies in your blood and your immune, and you’re not going to get re-infected again. And we don’t think there’s any good evidence you can get re-infected again with this virus. So once you’re in that category, you’re free and clear. We could take all the people who’ve had the infection, recovered and just send them out to live normally. And that may be something that can be done in the later time, because, you know, they are the people who could help look after people and deliver stuff and do all that sort of thing and be at no risk to themselves. So what we want to do here and what the prime minister’s trying to do is to flatten the curve. That is to slow the rate of infection, and the reason for that is we don’t want to get into the situation the Italians got into where their health services were simply overwhelmed. It’ll be hard not to see some of that. For instance, you know, the Italians got into the situation where they’re having to take people off of ventilators, older people off ventilators to try and save younger people. We would hate to have to do that. And of course, the doctors may have to do some of that, if people don’t behave responsibly and don’t keep their social distance and don’t do everything possible to stop spread. That doesn’t mean that we don’t want herd immunity. The herd immunity we want is one that develops slowly because we’ve flattened the curve, and then what we would really like to add from the point of view of the herd immunity is a good vaccine, because if we could take the people who’ve been infected and recovered and then we could vaccinate everybody and and have total herd immunity, it’s a possibility, this whole, this virus may actually die out.
MG: Well, how far do you think we are from the vaccine?
PD: The vaccine, we’re all giving out the figure of 12 to 18 months. There are a few new concerns from other experiments that were done earlier with SARs and MERS that some vaccine formulations, not all, but some, could give you what we call a bit of immuno-pathology. That is they might actually make a little bit worse or or contribute to some bad, bad situation. So we have to be careful with the vaccine. But the first vaccine product from the University of Queensland, I’m told, has already gone into lab animals. And it looks, it’s going well from what I know and of course, in the United States, a different type of vaccine has already gone into people. So we have to go through safety testing. The first one is what we call a Phase one trial, where we test it in people, make sure it’s safe, and of course, we can always also bleed them and get antibodies so we can see what they’re doing. That will only be quite a small number of people. Then you go to a phase two safety XEZ trial with a larger number of people. And then you get it out there in a broader, much bigger trial where people might be getting natural challenge, but that’s what takes the time. It’s not really doing the, making the actual product at the beginning, but it will be a time lag in actually producing a lot of this stuff. A lot of it is in the time you need to actually test it for safety.
MG: We all understand it’s a long process, but nevertheless, a year to 18 months in a very long time in this modern age.
PD: Yes. Yes, it does. And a lot of us think that it may be possible to speed that up. It depends how well it goes. It really depends how safe it looks at the early stages. And of course, it’s possible as this is being done globally and we and the United States and so we’re not the only country is doing it. Some people may push it ahead much, much quicker and take more risks to get to what could be quite a safe vaccine. If you think back, you know, think back to the early polio vaccine, the measles vaccine, mumps vaccine and so forth, they didn’t go through anything like this - extended safety testing. There was a measles vaccine that was made early on, which was a killed virus rather than the live virus, we use now, though, that was damaging and you wouldn’t want it push ahead with that one million.
MG: Now we’re seeing obviously progressively tougher measures being imposed and various institutions and businesses shut down. A lot of those social problems and dislocation. Would you like to see a more total shut down to try to knock this thing on the head somewhat earlier than will be done through its staged approach?
PD: Well, you can see how difficult that is. I mean, what’s happening is the chief medical officer advising the prime minister. And so with that, they have staged a response. So we we’ve seen some staging of that. And it can go further if these measures don’t work. They’re pretty dramatic, really, what’s been introduced. If that doesn’t work then we can, we will expect to see more, more extreme measures. But you can see the difficulty of it. For instance, you know, we’ve got all the social distancing, but then the Centrelink thing crashes and you’ve got lines of people stretched out, trying to get to Centrelink. So they’re not keeping their social distance. They would probably do so if they were in a different situation. So it’s a very difficult situation. The other thing is, you know, with schools, we’re not really sure that schools are a major source of transmission. We do know that children can be infected, they don’t seem to be as infected as much, and they certainly don’t seem to be as severely clinically infected. But there are questions know what about the children who are in socially vulnerable situations? What about the children and health care workers and essential staff? Because we can no longer call on granny, because granny is at great, great risk of severe disease. So it’s a complex situation. And I think the way the response is working reflects that complexity. And that’s why we haven’t seen total lockdown.
MG: Would you like total lockdown, though?
PD: I think, it’s really, you know, the natural instinct of a basic scientist is to go for it. But basically, as you think about the social issues and social context, you realise that that’s a difficult option. The government’s being advised by top epidemiologists, these are the people who study the spread of infectious disease. And as far as I’m aware, some of the people from our institute. As far as I’m aware, they’re acting on that advice.
MG: What’s your own position on schools?
PD: Again, much what I said. I think it’s a very, very difficult situation. And I leave that to the people who are actually, who study the spread of infection. I’ve studied the nature of infection. I’m interested in what’s called pathogenesis: how a disease actually works inside the individual or the animal. But there are other people who are highly specialised and very skilled in trying to work out the spread characteristics and what determines them. We know with influenza from the work of Ben Cowling in in Hong Kong, is one of the guys who’s been advising us, that influenza is certainly a major cause of infection in the home. We do not know that for this virus.
MG: Your, obviusly, your preoccupation is the science. But like everyone else, you have to organise your own life. Do you have and are you seeing them at all?
PD: Yes, we have four grandchildren and we won’t see them for ages except at a distance. And if they come and stand outside, we can wave to them or we’ll have drinks at 20 paces or something, I don’t know. So, no, we’re not seeing our grandchildren. We’re socially isolating at home. I’m doing everything by cell phone or computer and Skype or Zoom or whatever and trying to obey the guidelines. We have a three times a week morning conference, an hour long conference, three times a week in the morning on what’s going on in the institute. It’s all to do with testing, expanding testing, developing clinical trials, developing alternative vaccine candidates, developing antibody tests for screening people. We’re collaborating with overseas companies. We’re collaborating with philanthropy. A lot of money coming in from various people, a whole complexity of issues. It’s all extremely energetic, I should say. People are working seven days a week. Some are getting exhausted, particularly on the testing side. And it’s been an incredible experience to live through so far. And, you know, if I lived through it, I might try and repeat Daniel Defoe’s book, Journey of the Plague Year, written by a scientist, not in the 17th century whenever it was.
MG: Well, you’ll certainly be able to update your pandemic book. Peter Doherty, thank you so much for talking with The Conversation today.
New to podcasts?
Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Politics with Michelle Grattan on Pocket Casts).
You can also hear it on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Politics with Michelle Grattan.
Additional audio
A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.
Image:
Dave Hunt/AAP
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
20200313-177293-u20glz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3119%2C1833&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip"> What do you need to know about COVID-19 and coronavirus? We asked our readers for their top questions and sought answers from two of Australia’s leading virus and vaccine experts.
Today’s podcast episode features Professor Michael Wallach and Dr Lisa Sedger – both from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney – answering questions from you, our readers. An edited transcript is below.
And if you have any questions yourself, please add them to the comments below.
New to podcasts?
Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here.
Transcript
Sunanda Creagh: Hi, I’m Sunanda Creagh. I’m the Digital Storytelling editor at The Conversation, and I’m here today with two of Australia’s leading researchers on viruses and vaccines.
Lisa Sedger: Hi, my name’s Lisa Sedger. I’m an academic virologist at the University of Technology Sydney. And I do research on novel anti-viral agents and teach virology.
Michael Wallach: I’m Professor Michael Wallach, the Associate Head of School for the School of Life Science (at the University of Technology Sydney) and my expertise in the area of development of vaccines.
Sunanda Creagh: And today, we’re asking these researchers to answer questions about coronavirus and COVID-19 from you guys, our readers and our audience. We’re going to kick it off with Dr. Sedger. Adam would like to know: how long can this virus survive in various temperatures on a surface, say, a door handle or a counter at a public place?
Lisa Sedger: Oh, well, that’s an interesting question, because we hear a variety of answers. Some people say that these types of envelope viruses can exist for two to three days, but it really depends on the amount of moisture and humidity and what happens on that surface afterwards, whether it’s wiped off or something. So potentially for longer than that, potentially up to a week. But with cleaning and disinfectants, etc, not very long.
Sunanda Creagh: And what’s an envelope virus?
Lisa Sedger: Well, viruses are basically nucleic acid. So DNA like is in all of the cells in our body or RNA. And then they have a protein coat and then outside of that they have an envelope that’s made of lipids. So it’s just an outer layer of the virus. And if it’s made of lipids, you can imagine any kind of detergent like when you’re doing your dishes, disrupts all the lipids in the fat. That’s how you get all the grease off your plates. Right? So any detergent like that will disrupt the envelope of the virus and make it non-infective. So cleaning surfaces is a good way to try and eliminate an infective virus particle from, for example, door handles, surfaces, et cetera.
Sunanda Creagh: And Professor Wallach, Paul would like to know: should people cancel travel plans given that this virus is already here? Does travelling make the spread worse? And that’s international travel or domestic travel.
Michael Wallach: So this question has come up to many different governments from around the world who’ve reacted very differently. Australia’s been very strategic in banning travel to certain places. And of course, those places you would not want to travel to at the time when there’s an outbreak like China, Italy, Iran, etc.. I was also asked the question on ABC Tasmania: should the Tasmanians restrict domestic travel to Tasmania? At the time, they had a single case. And I said to them, if you have one case, you most likely have more. You will not prevent the entry of the virus into Tasmania. But what restricting travel can do is restrict the number of people who are seeding that area with virus and make it more manageable. So it’s a question of timing. As I was saying to you earlier, the cost-benefit of closing off travel has to be weighed very carefully because the economic impacts are very great. So I think it’s a case by case basis. Ultimately, the planet is now seeded. And we’re moving into the stage of exponential growth and that it will affect travel very severely, where in all likelihood, travel will be very much curtailed now.
Sunanda Creagh: And this question’s from our reader, David. He wants to know: with the flu killing more people each year than coronavirus and mostly the same demographic, why is this outbreak receiving so much attention? Can’t we just catch the flu just as easily without cancelling events and travel plans?
Lisa Sedger: Yes, and I understand the question. Flu exists. We get it seasonally every year and then we get pandemic flu. And yes, people do die from influenza. I think it was 16,000 people in the US died last US winter. But the issue with this virus is that we don’t yet know how to treat it particularly well. We’re trialling anti-viral drugs in China at the very moment. There’s clinical trials on experimental drugs. There’s drugs that doctors are using. But until that data comes in and we actually know what regime of anti-viral drugs (are best) to use, then we don’t really yet know how to treat it with anti-viral drugs. The other thing is with flu, we have a vaccine. People can take the vaccine. Somebody gets sick in their family, the other family members can take the vaccine and prevent the spread of the virus. So the difference is with flu, we have ways to control it. We know about the disease. We know how it presents. This virus, we’re still understanding the clinical presentation and in different cohorts. So different age groups, different countries, different situations, we’re still understanding the symptoms. And we don’t yet fully know how to control it by antivirals. And we don’t have a vaccine yet.
Michael Wallach: Can I just add to that a bit? I think one of the reasons we’re being so careful is when it broke and Wuhan, at the beginning the mortality rate was extremely high. And with related viruses like SARS, and MERS that went as high as 35%, whereas flu mortality rates is usually around 0.1%. So it was that very high mortality rate that gave a real shock. Had it continued, it would have been devastating. We’re very fortunate that now we see it dropping down to the 2 to 3% level and some say much lower.
Lisa Sedger: And we also know now that some people get COVID, have very minimal symptoms and almost don’t even know that they’ve been sick. So I think that fear and anxiety, in that sense, is lowering.
Sunanda Creagh: And Molly wants to know: how far off is a vaccine?
Michael Wallach: So, we are working on vaccines in Australia. The group in Melbourne was the first to be able to isolate and grow the virus. And I’ve been in touch with them, in fact, this morning. We’re working collaboratively nationally as well as internationally, collaborating with people at Stanford Medical School who through Stanford, in collaborations we have with them, we have worldwide about 15 vaccine projects going, plus all sorts of industry companies are aiming to make vaccines. In fact, one company in Israel early on announced that they believe that they can get to a vaccine within a few weeks. The problem with the vaccine is you may produce it even quickly, but it’s testing it and making sure that it’s actually going to help. There’s a fear, with COVID-19, that if it is not formulated correctly, to make a long story short, it can actually exacerbate the disease. So everyone has to take it slowly and carefully so that we don’t actually cause more problems than we currently have. But I’m optimistic and believe that we’ll get there. The WHO declared it would take 18 months. I would like to present a more optimistic view, not based on anything that substantial, but I think we can do better than that. And it is a great learning curve for the next time this happens.
Lisa Sedger: Can I make a comment on that, too? Recently, we’ve just seen Africa experience a very significant outbreak of Ebola virus, and there’s been an experimental vaccine that’s been administered that has largely controlled that outbreak. I think the people working in vaccines and the people who do the safety and efficacy studies, we’ve learnt a lot from how to administer vaccines, how to get the data we need to show safety more quickly than we might have in the past. So in the sense we’ve learnt, we’re learning lessons constantly from viral outbreaks. It might not be the same virus, might not be the same country, even the same continent. But we’re learning how to do these things more efficiently and more quickly. And always the issue is weighing up safety versus the ethics of the need to administer all get it, get the drug out there as quickly as possible.
Sunanda Creagh: This reader asks: isn’t lining up at fever clinics for tests just going to spread it even more?
Michael Wallach: So for sure, the way in which people are processed at clinics is crucial and the minimal distance you should keep from a person who’s infected is, according again to the WHO, is one metre. So the clinics have to ensure that spread is minimised, not only spread between people waiting in line, but to the health workers themselves. We’ve had real problems for health workers in China. Several died. And we face that problem here. One of the things we have to do is ensure that we protect our health workers because otherwise they’re not going to want to go in and actually see the patients. Unfortunately, masks alone do not work. We can’t rely on them. So it’s a problem. In Israel, for example, testing for COVID-19, takes place in one’s home. An ambulance pulls up and takes the swab and then takes it to the lab. That actually would be the ideal approach. True, the ambulance services in Israel now are swamped and having great difficulty in coping. But as much as we can keep people separated from each other when they’re infected, it’s crucial for the success of any campaign.
Sunanda Creagh: And these questions from Jake. He wants to know for people like myself living in Victoria. How likely is it that we can catch the virus and is hand-washing really the only thing we can be doing to protect ourselves?
Lisa Sedger: I think we now know that the virus is definitely in Australia. If you go to the New South Wales or Victorian Health government websites, you can see them update the statistics daily, even less than a day so that the truth is it’s here and it’s probably in more people than we realise because we haven’t tested as many people and we now realise some people are asymptomatic or don’t show classic flu like symptoms. So it’s here and you can’t say that you’re not going to get sick. Alright? That’s the first thing to say. The second thing is, though, we can minimise what we do. Okay. So we can wash our hands constantly. We can try not to touch our face, our eyes, our ears, our nose. We’ve learned, for example, even how do you dispose of a tissue when you sneeze or cough or, you know, sneeze into your elbow? So it’s just about common sense. This is what I think. It’s no different really than protecting yourself from any respiratory virus infection. So seasonal flu or even a pandemic flu.
Sunanda Creagh: And how do you dispose of a tissue safely?
Lisa Sedger: Well, I guess you fold it in and then you put - you don’t touch it, you don’t put it up your sleeve, OK? - you put it in the garbage bin and wash your hands afterwards.
Sunanda Creagh: Michael would like to know: what can we learn from other countries that are handling this well? He says basically South Korea, as far as I can tell.
Michael Wallach: So the country that handled this outbreak the best so far has been Taiwan. The Taiwanese have been amazing in the sense that after the pandemic commenced in China, many Taiwanese returned to Taiwan. And you would have expected they’d seed that island very strongly and it would be a major outbreak. They were ready before the pandemic commenced. And that was largely because they went through a SARS outbreak. Previously, they had in place all the testing, all the people. They have the best health system in the world. And they kept the numbers down to 45 cases during a period when in China it was going into the tens of thousands. And they should be commended on that. It’s quite amazing the way they did that. The issue now in Taiwan, which concerns them, is in the end, that’s a great start. But their population now is unexposed and susceptible. So how do you release them from this sort of quarantine situation? That is the next phase. And that’s what we’re looking to see how that works, because same in Wuhan. The minute you put everyone back out to work and in the street, will there be a second wave? Most virologists, I think, would expect there will be a major second wave, third wave and maybe continued into the future. So we have to continue with our preparedness and with the hope that the vaccine will come into effect sooner rather than later. And then bringing the quarantine approach, enabling that peak of viral infection to occur when the vaccine is available. That would be the goal.
Lisa Sedger: If I could just add one point there. When you look at the number of cases on a per day basis in Wuhan, it was escalating very quickly. And then they brought in their very strict quarantine and self-isolation. But the cases continued to increase until a point where it started to look like it was under control and going down. And that was after two weeks. So quarantine only works until after the quarantine period, because only after that will you see the effect. So I would argue there’s two factors for why isolation worked in Wuhan: One was you limited the spread through the self-isolation and imposed quarantine, but at the same time, the number of people who are infected and asymptomatic were building their own immunity. The number of people who were infected and sick but who survived, one would imagine, have a robust immune response to that virus. So at the same time as limiting spread, you have also slowly built or actually quite quickly built a community with much higher levels of what we call herd immunity. So this second outbreak may come, but it may be considerably less significant.
Michael Wallach: In fact, that the areas where there are the major outbreaks maybe have better herd immunity than places where you keep it down to nothing. So it works both ways.
Sunanda Creagh: And Jane would like to know: when do we stop testing for this disease and basically just assume that everybody with the sniffles has it?
Michael Wallach: So first of all, the major symptoms are not sniffles, they are fever and coughing and shortness of breath. It’s the sniffles, though, that causes it to be spreadable more easily. That’s a good question: what the health authorities will decide to do at various stages of this pandemic. We’re now at what I would consider the early seeding phase. The world is now seeded with virus and different countries were going through exponential phases like described in Wuhan at different times. And how do they handle that will be a crucial question. I’ve seen all the different approaches from US, Israel, Iran. I think that a mixture of very strategic quarantine with travel restrictions, with bringing in other types of… certainly health authorities will need to control the number of beds that are being occupied. For example, again, in Israel, they just went over their bed limits, so patients are starting to be treated at home. So at some point, I think depending on how the epidemic goes, if we can keep it under control, we can keep the testing going. We can keep control. If the exponential rise is too fast, we will lose control and the testing will become meaningless. So the hope is that things will be sorted and I think Australia has the opportunity to do really well and big decisions have to be made now.
Lisa Sedger: There’s already a paper just this week published in The Lancet that profiles survivors versus those who have succumbed from the infection. And we’re starting to learn what some of those factors are. So as as clinicians can better predict who are likely to be the more seriously ill people, they can better predict who should go to hospital for treatment, and as Michael has said, who are better actually just treated at home.
Sunanda Creagh: And Dr. Sedger, Kardia would like to know: how does this virus respond to cold or warm temperatures? Is it like the flu, which thrives in cold weather?
Lisa Sedger: I have heard so many different things about this. I will be completely honest and say I’m not certain that we really know. What we know is when this high humidity viruses can exist for longer because they don’t dry out. So that envelope we talked about is less likely to be dried out. And once that’s dried out, the virus is less infective. It’s not actually infective at all if it’s disrupted that envelope. But whether it likes cold temperatures, high temperatures, we think it’s not a warm temperature virus. We think it’s more a cold temperature virus. China’s just been going through their winter. Maybe one of the reasons it’s been big in Italy is they’ve just had winter. We also think the coexistence of seasonal flu in Italy at the same time is probably one of the factors that’s made it more severe. So, yeah, look, different circumstances in different countries, different climates. It’s not just about climate, though. It’s about susceptibility of various populations. Therefore, it’s a hard question to answer (at the moment).
Michael Wallach: Look, I would say in working in infectious diseases for many years, it’s a very difficult thing to predict. Remember with, it doesn’t matter which disease I was working on, everyone said it can’t transmit in dry climates. And it transmitted beautifully in the desert. And you think everything’s totally dry and it still transmits and vice versa.
Lisa Sedger: Well, you’ve got MERS is another coronavirus, which is your Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, and that’s in the desert climates. So that’s why I wanted to hedge my bets on my answer.
Sunanda Creagh: And Professor Wallach, this reader wants to know: once you’ve recovered from coronavirus, can you just go back to your normal, non-isolating life?
Michael Wallach: So the current understanding, according to colleagues also in the U.S., is if you go through one infection, you’re probably rendered immune against re-infection. There have been reports of cases of people getting re-infected. But the opinion that I heard so far is that it’s probably recurrence of the same infection that probably went down in terms of clinical symptoms. But the virus remained that just came back up. It happens with the flu all the time. The question is, what should be your behaviour after you go through a bout? I guess I would still be careful, which Lisa can maybe add to, it could be that the virus will continue to mutate. Although again, I fortunately heard this morning that they’re not that worried about this virus mutating at the rate that flu does. And we’re hopeful that we will develop herd immunity. People have gone through it then will be fairly safe unless, you have some immune disorder. And then it will become part of our environment just like flu is.
Sunanda Creagh: And here’s a question from me. It seems like there’s two camps. There’s the people who genuinely really concerned, quite worried about the situation. We see that in the panic buying. And then there’s the other camp of people who are saying it’s all been blown up. It’s all hype. We don’t really need to worry about it. It’s too early to panic. And I just wondered, how do you reconcile those two views out there in the community?
Michael Wallach: So early on in this outbreak, when I was interviewed also on the ABC and speaking to other groups, I took a very low panic view, maybe because I’ve been thinking about a pandemic for many years. And for me, it was always not a question of if, but when. I actually look at this, in a way, in a positive sense. We’re facing a pandemic that, yeah, as terrible as it is, is nothing in comparison to what could be if it’s a pandemic flu. For example, we experienced the Spanish flu in 1918, which killed somewhere between 20 to 50 million people. So the order of magnitude of mortality right now is extremely low compared to other potential pandemics. If you take China out of the equation, we’re at about 1500 people who died worldwide. That’s not to say we shouldn’t show great respect for the value of their lives. It’s mainly very elderly people with complicating illnesses and probably would have had the same effect if they were infected by flu. So my take on this whole thing is we all have to stay calm. We all have to accept the fact that this is part of nature. These viruses are out there all the time. We know them. I can detect now flu viruses in wildlife, birds that are coming into this country now, that can mutate and start affecting humans. So we have to be prepared. We have to face up to them, together in a collaborative way, in a scientific and professional way. And we could win. If we panic and react the way the market is, for example, of course, that’s that’s an improper way to react. Rather, this is part of being, of our biology. Viruses exist that can hurt us and they will always exist.
Lisa Sedger: Yeah. Look, I think there are a few factors that we can really learn from. So one is to work out where these viruses come from. And a lot of these RNA viruses exist in bats. They seem to be transmitted into wild animals through bat droppings. And I think one of the lessons we, the world all over, might need to learn is how we deal with the marketing and selling of wild animals that are then used for foods. That may then prevent these viruses from getting into the human population. So I think there are lessons to be learned, number one. But Michael, I would disagree with you in one sense “that it is maybe not as bad as pandemic flu”, on the other hand: we do have vaccines for flu, we do have anti-virals. And we have a whole world that has various levels of immunity to flu and different strains of flu. Whereas this virus is entering into a naive (non)-immune population. And that’s what’s so significant to start with. It may be that as our immunity at a population level increases, as a disease this will become far less significant. But the first outbreak of it in a naive, (non)-immune, (and a) “naive population” will always have the highest level of morbidity and mortality. And that’s where we have learned from other diseases like Ebola. As I mentioned, what we already know about flu, how we already control flu and the development of new and novel antiviral agents will be just as effective and important, I believe, as will the development of vaccines. So I think there’s a lot to learn to prevent this or limit, I should say, to limit these the severity of the outbreak and maybe even prevent it from happening again. As I say, if we stop trapping wild animals and eating them, we might prevent the outbreak of some of these type of RNA viruses.
Michael Wallach: So I certainly agree with that. And China is now putting into law a restriction on the sale of wildlife in their markets. What I’m trying to do, and I hope we both agree, is that in proportion to, for example, influenza, even seasonal flu that killed in one year I think up to 600,000 people worldwide, I’m just trying to put things into proportion. To prevent people from panicking. To understand that, yes, this is affecting the elderly. And anyone who is elderly, suffering from heart or respiratory conditions would certainly isolate themselves. So where my wife’s parents live, where they live in a retirement village, they made a decision to close off the entire village. Nobody’s allowed in, as a means of preventing - because they’re an elderly population - people bringing in COVID-19 and infecting that area. And I certainly agree with that sort of strategy.
Sunanda Creagh: And John would like to know: are the death rates likely to be lower in a country like Australia with lower rates of smoking than places such as China, Iran and Indonesia?
Lisa Sedger: Again, I think this is a little bit we have to watch and just wait and see. It’s very hard to predict these things. It was intriguing that some of the highest death rates in China appeared to be men as well as just the elderly. And that might be because there’s a high rate of long term smoking. So almost like an endemic lung pathology within that community that somehow exacerbated the disease. In Australia, we may find that there are different populations that are the most at risk. So we know, for example, the virus uses a receptor to get inside of cells that is a protein present on cardiac tissue. So people with known cardiac conditions may turn out to be at higher risk. And in a non-smoking type country, maybe people with existing heart conditions will turn out to be the most at risk. In America, we might find something quite different. What we might find is it’s more socio-economic. Maybe people without health insurance. Maybe people who are homeless and live on the streets will turn out to be the most affected because they have limited resources to be able to get treatment and they can’t afford treatment. So I think each country will be different. We mentioned earlier Italy has one of the highest fatality rates at the moment. That may be because they actually have a large number of people within their population that are over 65. So it might actually be not that surprising given that demographic. It might also be that they’ve had an outbreak of seasonal flu at the same time. We don’t know whether one type of virus limits the other. It’s quite possible you can get co-infections and that’s where people get the most sick. I think it’s going to pan out in different countries slightly differently. I think it’s a case of watch this space.
Michael Wallach: The other thing, just on the rate of transmission. What they go according to is the people who show up to the clinic. And the results from a study done in China indicate that they may have only picked up 5% of the people that have COVID-19. So it’s about 20-fold more than actually recorded because it’s mild and very little symptoms. The other thing that’s becoming a little disconcerting for scientists is there may be two strains of the virus. And the initial outbreak, as I said, the mortality rate was very high. It could be the virus, in order to transmit, went through a mutation that aided its transmission. And I would hope that would probably occur in pandemic flu. Maybe a little less pathogenic than the original strain was. I was surprised to see at the beginning such high mortality and then how it dropped down. That’s the results also put online by the CDC. And we’re looking and following that.
Lisa Sedger: Yes, viral evolution is a really key topic at the moment. We think RNA viruses and the rate that they mutate is much higher than DNA viruses. And it’s really a factor of how quickly the virus mutates and how quickly a person’s immune response is able to effectively control the virus replication. So the viruses that sometimes persist longer in a community are not necessarily the most virulent. So what we might also be seeing is a population, a group within the population who get a less severe disease, maybe even asymptomatic, but that may, long term, prove to be the bigger - how could I put this? - the bigger population of viruses that exist within that community.
Sunanda Creagh: And Michael would like to know: if I could shrink myself down to microscopic size and watch a virus invade a cell, what would I see?
Lisa Sedger: Well, a virus is not like a bacteria. A bacteria is a entity all of its own, and it can replicate and make another copy of itself and grow on a nutrient source. A virus, however, is sometimes called a non-living entity because outside of a human cell, it can’t replicate. It just exists as an entity. A virus is essentially just a piece of DNA, which is, you know, in the nucleus of every cell. It’s what our chromosomes are made of. So it’s either DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat and sometimes it’s also a lipid-based envelope outside of that, again. The virus will somehow encounter a cell. And for respiratory viruses, it’s largely by us inhaling water vapour droplets. They may contain hundreds of viruses. Those viruses then will attach or be exposed to our respiratory epithelium. If the virus can actually bind to the respiratory epithelium cell, then it might get inside. Once inside, it may or may not have the capacity to actually undergo replication, but it has to uncoat from that protein shell. Then the nucleic acid, the DNA or RNA has to make another copy of itself. Then all the genes that are in the virus have to get expressed as proteins. They then reassemble into a new viral particle and then the virus will get out of the cell. Sometimes it lyses (breaks) the cell, sometimes it will just buds out from the cell and leave the cell intact. And that’s what a virus is. That’s why we, some people call them living or non-living because they can only replicate in inside a cell, a host cell.
Michael Wallach: And it’s not like viruses have a will. So if they want to do this, it’s just part of evolution.
Lisa Sedger: Yes, I’m never a favour of the argument you sometimes see people say “it’s warfare, it’s the virus vs. immune system!” But there’s no will involved, it’s just capacity of life to replicate itself.
Sunanda Creagh: And Deidre writes in to say, I heard on the radio today that half the population is likely to get this. And with, say, a 1% death rate, the body count will add up. And I wondered what you thought of that.
Michael Wallach: So there was an announcement actually by Angela Merkel preparing Germany for 70% of the population being infected. Lisa may say the number is lower, I don’t know, until we build up herd immunity. The question of the mortality rate, as I alluded to before, I think based on what again, CDC and WHO are writing, is probably overestimated. Some estimate the mortality rate as being much lower. That’s not to say… every death is a family and has to be looked at and be concerned about. So again, I think and would like to hope that as we develop new vaccines, as we develop drugs, as we develop approaches to quarantine people, test them, keep them at home, isolate them, we’ll get the mortality rate under control. And I’m going to express an optimistic view. This world has amazing capabilities of doing amazing science. And if we apply it and work together, I think we can control this problem.
Lisa Sedger: Yes, absolutely. I would endorse that. And I’d say that the mortality rates at the moment simply reflect who is being tested. And it’s primarily people who are turning up with symptoms. But we’re now beginning to appreciate that there is a large number of people who could be quite asymptomatic, who are never tested. This virus will certainly have infected many more people than will be tested. And if we did have surveillance of every single person being tested, then there’s two questions here: Are you testing for the presence of the virus? If they’ve had virtually no symptoms and not a big illness, you might not find the virus. But if we test for the presence of an immune response to the virus, we would truly know how many people have been infected. And then we could get a true estimate or at least a much closer estimate of what the mortality rate really is. So at the moment, there’s hyperbole.
Sunanda Creagh: And Catherine asks, what is the likelihood of transmission through using a public swimming pool?
Lisa Sedger: I would think quite small because a) the virus would be quite diluted in a swimming pool. Secondly, swimming pools are all treated with chlorine, for example, and chlorine is a very effective anti-viral agent. You’d have to drink a lot of swimming pool water to get the virus.
Michael Wallach: I agree with that.
Sunanda Creagh: Candy would like to know: there are conflicting symptoms lists circulating on Facebook. One says it starts with a dry cough and if your nose is running, it is not COVID-19, which I suspect is incorrect. Can we please have an accurate list?
Michael Wallach: So, again, the major symptoms are, in fact, the cough and shortness of breath and fever. But, it’s not to say it’s not possible that you’ll have also upper respiratory effects. The virus goes into the lung and attaches to the alveolar cells or to the cells that make up our air sacs and that help our breathing. And it has to get there to really cause this disease. So if there’s upper respiratory involvement, which includes sneezing and runny nose, et cetera, it’s probably not the main effect of the virus. Again, I would say if you see that somebody is sneezing and wheezing and and that’s it, it’s probably an allergy, but it does frighten people. I was on the train this morning, and I know if I, God forbid, sneezed the whole train would empty out pretty quickly.
Lisa Sedger: You know, we’re just coming into winter. And actually, it’s a really good question because at the moment, what’s building is a sense of fear. But we must keep in perspective that there will also still be the normal seasonal cases of flu. So just because somebody sneezes or has a sore throat does not mean that they’ve got COVID-19. And we need to make sure, I think it’s really important that we don’t stigmatise people who have symptoms because it may not even be COVID. And we’re all at risk from any respiratory tract infections and already have been for years. That’s not a new thing. We just need to keep things in perspective.
Sunanda Creagh: A question from Karen: can you catch it twice?
Lisa Sedger: Normally, I would have said no, because we imagine that there’s a good immune response that will then provide you protection from re-infection. That’s what our immune system does. But this is a new virus. We don’t yet fully understand how our immune system clears it. We don’t know whether virus can remain for a longer period of time. I would would say, though, that there are only a few cases of people who have been treated, appear to have recovered, they’ve gone home, they’ve then had another relapse. There’s only a very few number of cases that have been like that. So for all intents and purposes, I don’t think that’s something we should fear and it’s not something we’ve seen with the previous SARS outbreak in 2003.
Sunanda Creagh: And Tim would like to know: how will quarantine work in a family?
Lisa Sedger: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? We think of quarantine as being away from work or away from public places. But really, if you have been infected, then the people in your family are as at risk as your work colleagues would be at work. Again, I think it’s about just common sense. Don’t share food utensils, wash your hands, don’t keep touching your face and your mouth and your nose. Get rid of tissues in a nice sort of clean manner. It’s about minimising transmission.
Michael Wallach: Let me just add to that, that all the data indicates that children likely will only get very mild symptoms, if at all. So if you’re a family member and you’re worried about your children, this is one time that you can be happy about this. All the results so far indicate that children aged zero to nine, there’s not been a single death.
Lisa Sedger: Whereas what we do know is the elderly appear to be more susceptible to a more severe disease. So that’s where if I’m sick, it’s better not to go and visit my grandparents or something like that. That’s where quarantine within the family works in a practical sense.
Sunanda Creagh: And just to finish up, is there anything else that you’d like to add?
Lisa Sedger: Yeah, I think I’d just want to finish with a really positive note. I mean, we live in an amazing era of medical research and science. Within within a very, very short period of time, parts of the virus had been sequenced. We now track the virus in its entire sequence. We know, we have clinical trials for the drugs. We have people working on vaccines. We have epidemiologists better understanding the disease susceptibility within a population. I mean, we learn a lot from other existing outbreaks of infectious diseases. And I remain positive that, you know, the medical and scientific community working together will be able to solve this. I’m quite confident that there’s a really strong response. That’s not to diminish that people have died and it’s been tragic. But we live in an era where we’re exposed to infectious agents and we are getting better and better at controlling most of those infections.
Michael Wallach: So I’ll just add and put in a plug for a program I’m very much involved with called Spark working with people at Stanford. We established a program for exactly this time, when there’s sudden outbreaks. And the program now involves 23 countries and around 70 institutions, all working together for outbreaks of Zika, Ebola and now coronavirus. It gives me great hope that, apart from what you said, we’re now working together collaboratively like never before. We’re putting our egos outside and we’re saying we have social responsibility to do better. Certainly, in the case of a pandemic. And we’re doing it. And we’re very proud to be able to say we have 15 projects going on now collaboratively that we just formed over the past two weeks, together with our colleagues all over the world. I also believe in a very bright future.
Production credits
Recording by postgraduate.futures at the University of Technology Sydney.
Audio editing by Sunanda Creagh.
Theme beats by Unkle Ho from Elefant Traks.
Read more: Coronavirus is stressful. Here are some ways to cope with the anxiety
20200310-61127-1q22miq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5568%2C3709&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip">
Lukas Coch/AAPWith 100 domestic cases as of March 10, federal and state governments and health authorities face daunting challenges posed by COVID-19 in coming weeks and months - securing a workforce of nurses and doctors to treat the sick, ensuring enough testing facilities to meet a rapidly growing demand, and stemming the spread of the virus, to the maximum extent possible.
As Chief Medical Officer for the federal government, Professor Brendan Murphy is confident about maintaining enough health staff, including in nursing homes.
“You can find a health workforce if you look hard enough, and if you can fund the surge. So I think we will find them.”
Murphy is also optimistic the present self-isolation period of 14 days can be shortened at some point, as the incubation period of virus is now thought to be “probably around five to seven days”.
When will the virus peak in Australia? Murphy says: “If we had widespread and more generalised community transmission, I would imagine that would be peaking around the middle of the year, in the middle of winter. … But that’s really our best guess of the modelling at the moment. And it’s very, very hard to predict.”
Murphy re-iterates that only people in certain categories need to be tested; in the last few days there has been a “significant surge” of people with flu-like symptoms but outside these categories who have been seeking testing, placing pressure on facilities.
With eyes on Italy’s lockdown, could a single region of Australia be locked down?
“It’s potentially possible, absolutely. If we had a city, a major city that had an outbreak of some thousands, and the rest of the country was pretty unaffected, we could very easily consider locking down a part of or a whole town or city.”
Transcript (edited for clarity)
Michelle Grattan: Since the outbreak of the coronavirus in December, we’ve witnessed the escalation of COVID-19 to a worldwide health crisis, which is now flowing over to a potential economic crisis. There have been about 100 confirmed cases in Australia and the government is preparing for the situation to get much worse in health terms. On the economic side, it’s about to announce a stimulus package to try to keep the country out of recession. To discuss the health issues we have today, Professor Brendan Murphy. He’s Australia’s chief medical officer and the government’s key health adviser on this crisis. He is also due to move on to a new job as secretary of the federal health department, as soon as the government feels it can release him from his current tasks. Brendan Murphy joined us from Sydney by telephone. Professor Murphy, we’re seeing the escalation of cases in Australia. Is it possible to estimate when we might see the peak of the crisis and how long after that peak might we expect some sort of de-escalation?
Professor Brendan Murphy So it’s not possible to accurately predict. We have modellers who are doing mathematical modelling based on the behaviour of this virus that we’ve seen so far, particularly in China. And what’s happening with the development of cases in Australia at the moment. The critical trigger point for an escalation would be when there is widespread community transmission in Australia, which we haven’t seen at this stage. We have only one real instance of community transmission in North Sydney at the moment. But if, for example, over the next month we moved into a phase where there were a number of community outbreaks, then that could escalate in the worst case scenario into an epidemic across the country, which could last as an epidemic from anything from around 8 to 12 weeks. The modellers predict. So if if that happens and I reiterate that we are going to try and contain and isolate and limit the scale of community transmission. But if we had widespread and more generalised community transmission, I would imagine that would be peaking around about the middle of the year and in the middle of winter, that sort of time. I think that that’s that’s really our best guess at the modelling at the moment. And it’s very, very hard to predict.
MG: And what’s your best guess as to your ability to limit this community transmission? Because as you say, the containment has been pretty good at the moment, most of the cases have been people coming from abroad, but somewhere like Italy, for example, obviously it got out of hand.
BM: So I think what happened in Italy is probably the same as what happened in Iran. I think what happened was some cases came out of Hubei province of China, probably in late January, and they spread widely in those communities in Iran and Italy without them realising it. One of the features of this virus is that it’s quite mild for most people. And so it can spread quite easily with people not even being particularly sick. And it’s only when you start to see, unfortunately, a lot of elderly people or people with chronic disease who unfortunately get a more severe disease and might even die that they twigged. So the other interesting information is coming out of the experience that China has had outside of the Hubei Province when they have really seemingly brought under control outbreaks of a thousand or more cases in many places. And also the experience in the Republic of Korea, where whilst they have had a very large outbreak, they are seemingly managing to isolate it in one area. So that gives us some hope that if we had some outbreaks in Australia, we could try to isolate those and control and limit the further spread.
MG: We’ll come back to some of that, but you’ve repeatedly stated the need for people to act calmly and keep things in proportion. Notwithstanding some unseemly supermarket scenes, do you think that the Australian community is responding appropriately, or is there still too much alarm?
BM: I think there is a lot of alarm, but people are alarmed about, you know, the changing international situation and they’re hearing stories. But I think we need to remember that we have a really strong health system in Australia. And as I said, more than 80% of people have a very, very mild illness. We’ve had three unfortunate deaths in Australia, but they were all elderly people with some underlying conditions in a couple of cases. The rest of the one hundred cases in Australia, really have had very mild disease. So if one did get this condition, it would be for most people just a nuisance, because at least initially we would be trying to isolate you and stop you spreading it. So I think there’s obviously concern, but it’s silly to go off and stock up with weeks supplies of lavatory paper and food and all that sort of stuff. And certainly at this stage, you know, in early March, there is really no reason to for anyone to be wearing masks when they’re walking around the streets because we don’t as yet have community transmission.
MG: You’ve mentioned older people being vulnerable and obviously certain sections of the community, such as those in nursing homes and those in indigenous communities are particularly at risk. Are you satisfied that enough is being done to protect them?
BM: So we’re obviously very concerned about both those groups and we are doing a very large amount of planning and preparation. We had a workshop with the aged care sector very recently and we’re planning a whole lot of contingencies, including the ways to provide additional workforce to look after people. If they happen to be, to pick up the infection, and developing a range of protocols to protect residents if infection does become in the community. But the same applies to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, where particularly for the remote communities, we’re very focussed on trying to see if we can protect some of them from the virus coming in at all.
MG: Lockdown, in other words?
BM: Well, to some extent, particularly looking at making sure that people who fly in and fly out to provide services, are properly screened and make sure that they don’t bring the virus in with them.
MG: Well, you mentioned the nursing home workforce. Where do you get additional people?
BM: Well, there are a range of….There are over 300,000 nurses in Australia, and probably an additional workforce would be largely nursing, and there are lots of nurses who work part-time. And some of the people who work in nursing homes have limitedworking hours because of their visa conditions, we’re looking at whether we can do something to relax that, and a range of strategies. You can find a health workforce, if you look hard enough and if you can fund the surge. So I think we will find them, but obviously the challenge might be as if you had a lot of sick leave in hospitals as well as nursing homes at the same time.
MG: Now, on the testing front, do we have sufficient testing facilities to accommodate the likely spread in the community? And at the moment, are too many people coming forward to be tested?
BM: So I think taking the second part of your question first, I think there has been am just in the last few days, a significant surge in people requesting testing, some of whom don’t meet our criteria for testing at the moment. In part, that has related to some misinformation in the media suggesting that everyone who had flu-like symptoms in the community should be tested. We’re not saying that at the moment. We’re simply saying that people who are returned travellers who develop acute respiratory symptoms or people who have been contacts of confirmed cases who develop acute respiratory symptoms should be tested. So I think some of the surge recently, some of the pressure on the testing facilities has related to that. In terms of the availability of testing. This is a very new test, it was developed experimentally and we set it up initially in Australia with our public health plan. They’ve done well over 10,000 tests now, but the public health laboratories won’t be able to cope with the demand for testing in a bigger outbreak. So government is working through ways of significantly expanding that over the next week or so by being online or in private pathology services, which have a wide network and large range of testing capability. So you will have enough testing to meet whatever demand there is.
MG: This is all going to cost a lot of money in the end isn’t it? Do you have any estimate yet of the additional costs to the health system of the virus?
BM: Not that I can share publicly at this stage. I think government will be progressively sharing information about investments and the economic impact of the health impact. But suffice it to say, it’s many hundreds of millions of dollars, the impact of this virus has a significant outbreak.
MG: And it’s already announced, of course, that it will put in money to support the state’s efforts.
BM: Correct.
MG: Now could we just talk about the practicality of self-isolation. What do you recommend for people who share accommodation, other family members being in the household? Should those family members try to relocate? And won’t many self-isolating people have trouble sourcing their food and other provisions and therefore be tempted to dash to the shops? BM: Yeah, so I think self-isolation can be tricky. What we’re saying is that it’s okay to be with your family, we would recommend that you try to avoid close contact with your family. Generally speaking, if you’re keeping, you know, more than a metre or a metre and a half away from someone, that’s sort of social distancing is safe enough to prevent droplets spread, which is the way this virus gets spread. And obviously everyone in the house should practice very good hygiene, washing their hands and washing surfaces properly, getting provisions again where people obviously who have lived with others or who have friends can bring in provisions for them. We would discourage people from going out to the shops. We really would prefer people self-isolated to just only go out to medical appointments, and even then it would be nice to wear a mask if they did that.
MG: It is going to be difficult though, for some people, isn’t it, to look after themselves for a fortnight?
BM: And it is, indeed. And one of the things, that’s isolating if you’re a contact and we are looking at whether that 14 day period could be shortened to be closer to what we think the incubation period is.
MG: Which is what?
BM: Well it’s probably around five to seven days, but you need a margin for error. So, we’re looking to see internationally whether this, the current recommended quarantine period is 14 days, and at some stage I think there will be a recommendation to reduce that.
MG: And that will be fairly soon, do you believe?
BM: There’s ongoing discussion, so I can’t really predict, but I hope so. Yeah.
MG: Now, the government has said it’s preparing a mass communications campaign, advertising campaign. Broadly, what will that cover and when do you think we will see that? Because it does seem quite tardy in coming out.
BM: There’s been a lot of communication information available and there’s a national hotline and there’s much information on websites. But we need to push information out into every household and that’s a strong focus of government at the moment. So, that campaign material is is being finalized and it’s going to be coming out progressively over the next few weeks, including information, as I said, to to every household, to having a social media information. So the messages will be how to protect yourself, how to practice good hygiene, if we do get an outbreak, what you should do if your own a well, where where to go if you want to, f you think you’ve got the infection, how to get tested and how to get advice. So there’s a range of things in that comms package, which will be, as I said, rolled out over the next couple of weeks.
MG: And that will be on television and in the letterbox?
BM: Potentially, yes. So we haven’t made absolute final decisions about all the media that it will go in. But it’s wide, wide access is planned.
MG: And on the topic of communications, do you believe the media have been responding proportionately?
BM: There have been elements of the media that have sensationalised things, but on the whole, we’ve been pretty good. I’ve found that I’ve not been misreported much in the many press conferences I’ve done. I sometimes get troubled when the headlines continue to refer to this “killer virus”. It can kill people, but so can flu. So I think on the whole, it’s not been too bad. Those elements of the media that you might expect to sensationalise have probably done so a bit.
MG: Now the medical profession was sympathetic to the Melbourne doctor who treated patients after returning from America with the sniffles. He was later tested positive for the virus, although he didn’t appear to be in the high risk category. But many people will be concerned going to their doctor as things get worse. Will there be tighter checks on medicos as the virus spreads?
BM: Well, it’s very hard, to actually check. As much as we expect people to act responsibly, and we’re certainly making it very clear to all health care professionals that particularly, if they’re a return traveller or if there’s more community transmission, that it is their responsibility if they develop acute respiratory symptoms to immediately get tested and to not continue working unless they’ve tested negative. So, you know, I don’t really know the full circumstances of this particular case or how unusual it was.
MG: But you could make it routine that doctors who had certain symptoms, even if they hadn’t been travelling, got the test.
BM: Well, I think we are considering now whether not just doctors, but all health care workers who have significant symptoms like a fever and respiratory symptoms, we are considering that they should probably be included in the group that should be tested at this time. Yes. That’s a discussion that’s happening at the moment with peak medical advice committee.
MG: Now in Italy, we’ve seen the near collapse of their intensive care facilities under the pressure of this virus. How well equipped are Australia’s hospitals in this intensive care area? Is it break down at all possible?
BM: We don’t think so. We we in some of the modelling that we’ve done, it would suggest that it would demand for intensive care beds could exceed our current intensive care capacity. So for that reason, we’re doing a lot of forward planning to see how we can expand our intensive care capacity. And there are good options for expansion into other wards with different workforce models and getting well ventilated. So that’s a very active planning phase now. So we want to make sure we’ve got very good surge capacity just in case we do have a larger scale outbreak that puts a very big demand on intensive care beds.
MG: How much will the onset of the flu season make it harder to manage this situation?
BM: It is tricky that the two come together. We are seeing a bit of inter-seasonal flu again this year. So most people who have flu like illnesses at this time have flu probably rather than the COVID-19 disease. So we will probably be recommending that people with acute respiratory symptoms have both the flu tests and the COVID-19 at the same time so that we can distinguish between the two. And we’re very strongly recommedning that this is a reason for everyone to make sure they get their flu vaccination this year.
MG: Now, different states currently have different containment measures in place and in some cases have issued differing advice. Are you concerned about this variability and is much being done to promote state coordination?
BM: Well, the state and territories meet with me every day, every afternoon for the last nearly two months now, we’ve had a daily teleconference and we basically agree on all of the advice and protocols as a consensus group. So I don’t know that there are any differences in our policy positions and our consensus advice. We have seen some slightly different interpretations, for example, on how our active quarantine orders have been used in one state rather than just voluntary quarantine in another state. Isolation practices should be consistent that we have had occasions where there might be somewhat different messages.
MG: Maybe it’s the politicians.
BM: Well, I wouldn’t. But occasionally, sometimes they can go a little stronger than the expert advice in what they say. But in the main, we have been very collaborative with a strong consensus.
MG: Now, going back again to the case of Italy, which is a whole country in lockdown, could we reach the point where we have a lockdown in a region in Australia?
BM: It’s potentially possible. Absolutely. If we had a city, a major city that had an outbreak of some thousands and the rest of the country was pretty unaffected, we could very easily consider locking down a part of or a whole town or city.
MG: Do you think we’ll reach the stage of big events being cancelled or postponed? At the moment the message is everything’s fine in relation to sporting events and the like, but could that change quite quickly?
BM: It could change, probably not very quickly, but it could change over a period of a couple of weeks. And again, the trigger for that would be evidence of widespread community transmission, where attendance at a public event could accelerate that transmission. So at the moment, we’re certainly not in that space, but we could get there. Absolutely.
MG: And just finally, before we finish, Professor Murphy, is this the toughest professional challenge that you’ve faced in your career? And, when do you expect to move to that new job as secretary of the health department?
BM: It’s certainly been a very…it’s a marathon. You know, it’s been all consuming for the last few months. I have been appointed to that new job, but it’s really up to the prime minister and the government to decide how long they want to have me leading the chief medical officer response. And I will follow the direction of government on that. I’m pleased to be doing what I’m doing now and obviously looking forward to the other job.
MG: Well, good luck with the present job and the new job. Professor Murphy, thank you very much for talking with The Conversation today.
New to podcasts?
Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Politics with Michelle Grattan on Pocket Casts).
You can also hear it on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Politics with Michelle Grattan.
Additional audio
A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
20200219-10980-1evj2d8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C50%2C4664%2C3591&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip">
ShutterstockAre we alone in the Universe? The expert opinion on that, it turns out, is surprisingly consistent.
“Is there other life in the Universe? I would say: probably,” Daniel Zucker, Associate Professor of astronomy at Macquarie University, tells astrophysics student and The Conversation’s editorial intern Antonio Tarquinio on today’s podcast episode.
“I think that we will discover life outside of Earth in my lifetime. If not that, then in your lifetime,” says his fellow Macquarie University colleague, Professor Orsola De Marco.
And Lee Spitler, a Senior Lecturer and astronomy researcher at the same institution, was similarly optimistic: “I think there’s a high likelihood that we are not alone in the Universe.”
The big question, however, is what that life might look like.
Read more: The Dish in Parkes is scanning the southern Milky Way, searching for alien signals
We’re also hearing from Danny C Price, project scientist for the Breakthrough Listen project scanning the southern skies for unusual patterns, on what the search for alien intelligence looks like in real life - and what it’s yielded so far.
20200219-10980-1ckbwrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">
20200219-10980-1ckbwrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip">
The Parkes radio telescope is scanning the southern skies, searching for signals from intelligent alien life.
AAP/MICK TSIKAS
New to podcasts?
Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here.
Additional audio credits
Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks.
Lucky Stars by Podington Bear, from Free Music Archive
Illumination by Kai Engel, from Free Music Archive
Podcast episode recorded and edited by Antonio Tarquinio.
Lead image
Shutterstock
This podcast could use a review! Have anything to say about it? Share your thoughts using the button below.
Submit Review
