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Transcript: Episode 21
How do we cope with isolation?
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
young people, touch, ucl, lockdown, difficult, isolation, crews, young, space, technology, intensive care, create, rehabilitating, space station, support, peter, astronaut, terms, feel
SPEAKERS
Peter Fonagy, Carey Jewitt, Kevin Fong, Vivienne Parry
Vivienne Parry 00:02
Hello and welcome to Coronavirus: The Whole Story and award winning podcast made right here in UCL. My name is Vivienne Parry, I'm a writer, broadcaster UCLA alumna and your host of this podcast that has been documenting UCL contributions to the fight against Coronavirus right from the very beginning. But what's all too evident this week is that it's so not over yet. And although over the last few episodes, we've boldly tackled returning to work, having conversations about the safest way to commute and how to create a kind of free office environment and even ventured last week to talking about a safe return to campus. The virus clearly has other plans. The situation is evolving rapidly rules seem to change every half hour, 6 million of us are already under some sort of regional restrictions. And a second lockdown, or is it seems to be called this time a circuit break looks increasingly likely Oh, and cancel Christmas. So in this episode, we're talking about isolation coming out of it, and going back into it, how to cope mentally and emotionally. And I'm turning to researchers in education, Brain Sciences and space science for the answer.
My first guest is Professor Peter Fonagy, a youth psychology expert and head of the Division of psychology and language sciences. Peter is also chief executive of the Anna Freud Centre for children and families, a charity that works with young people to provide mental health support and education. My next guest for this week is Professor Carey Jewitt professor of Learning and Technology in the very aptly named UCL knowledge lab. Kari studies touch and the way that it's used in communication. She's currently leading on the project in touch, which is exploring different methods of digital touch from robotics to virtual realities, and how their creation and use is affecting our culture. And finally, yet you did hear that right space science. I'm delighted that we've got my good friend Dr. Kevin Fong with us and Kevin's not presenting ridiculously good science programmes for radium TV. He is a consultant anaesthetist at UCL hospitals and flies with air ambulance, Kent, Surrey, Sussex. And if that wasn't enough, he's also an expert in space medicine as the CO director of the Centre for aviation space and extreme environment medicine, here at UCL. So let's start with you, Kevin, could you explain how being in lockdown and being an ICU is like being in space?
Kevin Fong 02:28
Well, and it's like being in space, I guess principally, because I've had to spend a lot more time with people than we would otherwise had to spend. And you know, that, that that is one of the issues that that astronaut crews face, that when they deploy, they are in each other's faces for many days, sometimes many months at a time. And, and, you know, you can hide the way you feel about someone for a few hours at a time, but you can't do it over days and weeks. You know, that's, that's the basis of most reality TV. So in some ways, you know, these lockdown strategies have been inadvertently I then created these sort of little clusters of people, you know, who are having to go through what the average astronaut crew goes through day in day out on missions?
Vivienne Parry 03:10
And what about ICU, because that's an environment that's also similar to space. And another way,
Kevin Fong 03:17
where I mean intensive care, medicine really has a lot of overlap with the space environment, partly because in both environments, you are reliant upon artificial technology to support your life and continue to survival from from from moment to moment. And so, you know, in both cases, you are using the sort of bleeding edge of science and technology to support life now, for astronauts. It's about supporting life, you know, healthy people, against an impossibly extreme environment. But but but for intensive care, it's about trying to support, you know, extremely unwell people with critical illness against that illness. And so, in both cases, you're sort of bringing together sort of pretty much every facet of science, technology and engineering that there is to bring all all really in the name of the same goal, which which is to protect human life,
Vivienne Parry 04:10
and what lessons can we learn from space that we can apply to either going into lockdown or coming out of lockdown? Let's try going into lockdown. First of all, apart from we can go to our family, and have NASA do selection process. It's all there if they'd like to try with my family. They're very welcome.
Kevin Fong 04:31
I'm not sure what lessons we can learn in terms of our sort of, you know, the psychology of isolation, or you know, we know that except to recognise that that is tough. I mean, it's tough to do that. It's, you know, we've probably all spent much more time with the people around us, and we would ordinarily have spent with them, and so we know, and they've been lots of lots of experiments with astronauts and and astronauts sort of surrogates as it were on Earth, that have shown just how hard people find that, I mean that, you know, there are a there's a famous Russian experiment, I think called Sphinx, in which the participants literally came to blows in the middle of the experiment. So, so I think that it's not so much what we can extract directly. But but it is to appreciate that these are difficult environments and probably require a great greater level of, I guess, you know, empathy and understanding on the part of everybody. It's good. I think for a lot of people, it's probably going to be quite different.
Vivienne Parry 05:32
And what about the other way around people coming out of isolation? Because that's actually also tough, people assume that it's easy, but suddenly going from just having a few people around you to many, or just being by yourself. That's quite overwhelming, isn't it?
Peter Fonagy 05:53
Yes. And I guess,
Kevin Fong 05:54
you know, that that's not something that we have particular problem with, with the astronaut corps, their big problem is actually rehabilitating their bodies to come back to Earth. And there are some amusing stories, you know, of the things that happened to them. They're not allowed to drive for a couple of days, because they're just terrible at driving cars. I mean, some would argue that I'm terrible at driving cars beforehand. But but but for them, it's a question of their physical rehabilitation. And coming back to it. I mean, I mean, there is this sort of well known phenomenon, people have been in long term confinement that, you know, it's very difficult when they come out, because they've not been used to choice but that is over much more extreme populations, there have been people who have been sort of held hostage, etc. And I remember one person who was sort of responsible for rehabilitating hostages who had come back from from being held captive. And they said that one of the first things you do to rehabilitate them as you take them to your supermarket in the middle of the night, and you sort of get them used to the idea that they can choose, they have choice and autonomy in their lives. locked down is not that it's not that extreme. But I think we shouldn't underestimate the psychological pressures that are associated with that. And there are some crossovers between between the isolation that we see with the crews that fly and you know, families and friends who are locked down together today,
Vivienne Parry 07:15
what do you advise your patients coming out of the isolation of ICU? What do you say will be helpful for them to do?
Kevin Fong 07:24
So it's difficult I mean, this is, you know, not my area, and because of the way that intensive care, and also, you know, where ambulance work, works, I tend not to see them at that stage, which is often the most difficult stage for the patients, I think, you know, and let's not confuse the two things for people coming out of isolation. As a result of this lockdown. There are some issues for people coming out of intensive care. There are substantial psychological issues, and not least, because if you've been through a period of critical illness where you've been ill enough to be in intensive care, and on a ventilator, that's a traumatic experience in and of itself. And so in fact, at University College London hospital where I work, the teams there have pretty good programmes of follow up and and of trying to get people used to, in fact, for those patients, for the patients who are in intensive care is actually Akin and has been compared to a hostage situation, because there are many, many, many overlaps. So so for that population, there is not just advice, there is very, you know, that there is support that we try and bring after they've been discharged from the intensive care unit.
Vivienne Parry 08:34
And is there anything that you've seen work well, for intensive care patients, in terms of coming to terms with their experience and readjusting that actually might be helpful for people coming out of lockdown? Obviously, there is not the same sort of trauma as you, as you say, and the, you know, the physical experience, but there are some little similarities to
Kevin Fong 09:04
Yes, I mean, it is difficult. I, again, I think I would come back to the idea that, that, you know, we shouldn't underestimate how difficult this is, I think going to be for people just just society in general, actually. So you know, go, I am more familiar with the challenges of being in lockdown, at least in comparison to what lockdown looks like compared to what it looks like for small crews of people who are locked up together in a confined space for a long period of time. I think that actually everything has changed has into something COVID has changed everything about our lives. And and I would imagine that we'll all go through something of an adjustment reaction all the way through this. So I think again, the advice is really only not to underestimated and, and to seek help if you need help.
Vivienne Parry 09:51
Finally, one question I've always wanted to know the answer to so when you've got a small crew just like the small number Have students that are now isolating perhaps in in fours or sixes or more in the halls of residence, who may be self isolating? How do you cope? What do they do in space when an argument breaks that?
Kevin Fong 10:17
I mean, most of the countermeasures in space revolve around selecting crews that are going to work well together in the first place. And you know, not all crews work well together. There's some very famous instances in the past of crews falling out, and particularly during the mir shuttle era where you had, you know, the first missions that Russians and Americans were flying together and within the thawing of the Cold War, there are some pretty impressive fallings out of cruise cruise that barely spoke to one another at times. And, and so a lot of it is really about selecting crews that are compatible. I think that one of the things we know that, that helps with the cohesion in the crew, is that they have worked together to overcome an obstacle together, you know, a challenge together. So we know the crews who've been some, you know, great challenge and succeeded on the other side, tend to be more cohesive. So, so it's that sort of thing. And although, although psychology is really not my primary sport, it's not my primary speciality at all, you know, that that is the sort of thing that we know from looking at astronaut crews that helps them that's why part of their training involves then sort of getting thrown into forest and doing survival training. I mean, yes, that is a possibility that they may have to do those things. But actually, you know, learning how to fend for yourself with a parachute, and some survival rations for a few days actually creates a sort of cohesion. That that is useful, I think, for them on mission later on. So I'm not sure how useful that is to us. I don't think too many people can throw themselves into a forest with survival rations right now.
Vivienne Parry 11:58
And then psychologist, psychological expert here. Some people, of course, return to their pre Coronavirus lives, or at least something similar. A lot of people, particularly young people are about to make big life changes travelling across the country, or even from across the other side of the world, and then may have to go back into some form of isolation. Typically, the students coming to university. So Peters are experts in young people, in what ways might lockdown affect young people, particularly those starting university?
Peter Fonagy 12:31
Thanks for it's a wonderful question. And it's a wonderful opportunity for me to talk about my favourite subject, which is indeed young people and that mental health challenges they face. So what you're looking at here we're going is something that is against the background of a problem that has been made more challenging, more difficult, by COVID-19, and the lockdown, but actually was pre existing. So there's been an increase since probably the early 1990s, maybe a little bit later, in mental health problems for young people. But during the crisis during lockdown, this has really reached proportions that I've, you know, never thought that I would see where in some surveys, the prevalence of diagnosable mental health problems went up to about 40% of young people. That's extraordinary. It's you telling me it isn't the up now, that's some surveys, not not not others, but it's certainly not below 30 35% in young women, and going with that is serious things, self harm, sorts of suicide. So it's not stuff that you can easily say that we can just overlook. What I would say is that there's a massive age difference here. And I'm really glad that we're highlighting young people because people my age, would you believe, notwithstanding everything that Kevin has been saying, their mental health problems during lockdown decreased. The older you were, the better you felt about lockdown, even though in terms of physical health, in terms of actual risk, we were most at risk, but actually, we kind of sort of enjoyed it enough to meet all the people that we didn't like meeting. I'm not sure that
Vivienne Parry 14:25
it's a quite a lot of people who are celebrating the fact that at Christmas, they wouldn't have to have any of the people that don't know,
Peter Fonagy 14:31
to be indeed Indeed, indeed, but young people on young people biologically, in terms of evolution, they are there to make relationships they need to have contact, physical contact, if you like with others, they need to have human beings there in order to feel real within themselves. And that's a very curious thing about human beings. I think what Kevin is saying touches on that, in isolation, we don't feel quite complete, that somebody's responding to us in a contingent way, in the way that reflects our agency, our identity is essential to our happiness and put with that something that is perhaps not just due to COVID. But perhaps is the background to it, which is young people's pessimism about the future. When I was younger, you know, remember, I was optimistic, I knew that things will be better for me than they were for my parents. Perhaps we have the first generation who are going to be less well off than previous generations, perhaps they are more worried about climate change, because it'll affect their lives. Whereas some of us in slightly order thing, well, there's a comala, Deleuze, you know, after me, who cares? Me employment will affect them more. So there is a pessimism about the future, that I think we have to be sympathetic with, beyond what the lockdown at threats of lockdown deprive young people of and when we have television programmes where they are blamed for causing the second wave that you know, if it wasn't for them, then we wouldn't have a problem. I really feel for young people, because all they're trying to do is to be young to do what they are supposed to do at that age, which is to make contact with other young people and feel validated in those relationships. So they have a lot. That's challenging. I'm sorry, Vivian, I've been going on.
Vivienne Parry 16:49
No, it's it's fascinating, actually, I've got enormous enormous sympathy for them. And UCL as an institution, I guess, isn't a difficult place, because on the one hand, wants to be as supportive as possible. But on the other hand, is in the position of having to enforce in some cases, isolation. But let me focus first on what sort of support works best for young people and what UCL can do?
Peter Fonagy 17:19
Well, I think making it easy for young people to meet each other. To be honest, I think having face to face lectures, I've never known face to face lectures to be an adequate treatment for mental disorder. I think they've caused mental disorder, perhaps the greater measure. So I don't think many young people will be too handicapped by either synchronous or asynchronous teaching, from lecturing, stopping. But I think, for us to facilitate young people being together safely, and encouraging it and facilitating the process of peer to peer support, I think is the best that we can do. Obviously, we have to be alert to young people needing our assistance. But I think what we really should do is largely to normalise their their responses to normalise excesses, if they feel anxious, if they feel angry, if they feel upset, that is what we'd expect them to feel that's not mental disorder, and avoid throwing therapy at them at all costs. I don't think that's really the best thing that we can do. We have to identify, perhaps those that have clinically important symptoms associated with trauma or associated with depression. And we have to give them access to targeted evidence based interventions, if we can by the NHS or via our own services. But I think by far the best thing that we can do, is to get out of their way. Because you know, our dad's giving advice to young people is not necessarily the best intervention, we should make things easy for them. We should put opportunities in front of them make things easy, that are safe and consistent with government advice, but really focus on how they can help each other rather than how we can help them
Vivienne Parry 19:23
I'm what particular advice would you have for young people themselves apart from and I'm thinking of Kevin here, choose your flatmates very wisely.
Peter Fonagy 19:31
I do think that that's a difficult one. Having them in St. Andrews locked down in the hall of residence is not going to help. So it's trying to find ways that we facilitate small groups safely meeting and drinking because they do I don't I'm not encouraged. I do not want to encourage drinking here. I just am being accepted happens right? It seems to me I, I as a student, I was served behind the bar, the Students Union. I remember the experience and it's important, but you know, us in academe, to actually try and create in seminar groups try and create within our courses, opportunities for young people to interact as, as best we can creating projects, creating little tables around which they can work, mixing the social with the work as far as we can. That would be I think, a psychologists advice.
Vivienne Parry 20:36
That's very helpful. Thank you so much. Now you're listening to Coronavirus the whole story a podcast brought to you by UCL Minds and if there's a question about Coronavirus, you'd like our researchers to answer, email us at minds@ucl.ac.uk or tweet at UCL. So far, we've talked a lot about preparing ourselves mentally for lockdown, either exiting or coming into it. But what I now like to talk to you about is something slightly different, and carry you study, touch, tell us how important touches for communication and interaction.
Carey Jewitt 21:18
Yeah, I think just listening to Kevin and Peter, you sketched out the need for empathy, and how difficult and uncertain our communication landscape is at the moment. One thing that's really brought to the forefront, many of us, including a lot of young people, I think, is how important touches. I mean, we really miss it, people are really missing kind of incidental touch, even just just being out in the world and being near one another, even people that we don't know, just being a part of something. And so touch you know, from it's the first sentence that develops, it develops in in in us before while we're in the womb. And it's also apparently the last sense to go. So people with dementia, often a touch will kind of be the last kind of real communicative modes that they have left, that's becomes meaningful. So it's very central to our well being. It's really closely linked to different emotional states. It's, I'm connected with loneliness. But coming back to something that Peter said, in a way like this touch deprivation, if you like that we're all experiencing or many of especially those of us who live alone, it's it's something that happened before COVID. It's something that COVID is really amplifying in our in our current communicational landscape. But there's many people through for lots of different reasons who haven't had touch in their lives. And that's linked to really strongly linked to well being. But it's also vital to the ways in which we communicate, because so much of how we communicate is fairly tacit as wave kind of below the radar. And the work that we're doing really wants to look at touch because we we see it as like perhaps one of the most neglected of our communicational senses like neglected by, by research. And also something that people find very hard to articulate, we have very limited language for talking about touch. And so this kind of sense of this very important thing that we're all starting to realise just how important it is to our own sense of self really. And, and that's how hard it is to talk about.
Vivienne Parry 23:39
And it's very hard not to touch, isn't it? I mean, we're all finding that so difficult. And it's not just, you know, not touching our faces, because a mask wearing all that kind of thing. But, you know, the, the inability to hug somebody taking if you know that that person is in distress, I'm afraid I will admit it now that a friend whose husband had died a couple of days previously, and I met her unexpectedly. And my first instinct was just to put my arms around her. And it's almost impossible not to do that, in that kind of situation. Because that is such an important part of our social interaction.
Carey Jewitt 24:20
It really is. And I think kind of that How could you not do that? You know, when you when you met your friend in that context, but I think what you raised there is this really difficult moment about the uncertainty of our communicational landscape now, which is how do we tucked like, and I think, how do we touch? How do we move? What kind of the change of the personal space that we have now? And what that does, I mean, obviously, it's hard to just manage on a practical level, like how do you how to afford you sit in a space and talk loudly enough that everyone can hear but you're still socially distant? So how do you you know, share Share, share a drink, how do you pass? cups? How do you, you know, this, everything comes up into kind of a problem. But more than that, in a way is this kind of how to touch and how to move and how to be in a space together really throws up all the questions about social norms like, like you're saying, like, it's what you would automatically do, you'd automatically find, hug your friend and that that situation and to not do so would just feel so unsympathetic, and so unnatural and uncaring that, so so it's the social norms that we're all dealing with kind of pre COVID. Now, we're in this quite long, extended period, everything's uncertain. And these social norms are normally completely unspoken. I mean, if someone's coming from another country to come study at UCLA to work at UCL, they'll become very aware of the cultural norms of how touch features in the in the British landscape, I think in London, that's in big cities, that's, that's quite different, because we're so such a diverse population. But nonetheless, coming from Southern Italy through to a very English environment, with which show up some of the rules about touch, or some of the rules about how we move and how closely we sit with one another. So students are having to deal with this kind of culture, but they haven't had shifts, but they're having to deal with it in this kind of place where all the social norms are kind of in flux. And, and were these unspoken tacit rules. And now kind of happened to be negotiated and spoken about. And I think that's very, very difficult. And I really loved how much Kevin and pizza without being completely dystopian. Just want to recognise how difficult this is. And I think that's really important to be kind to ourselves and kind to one another, and to recognise that it's tough negotiating all of these things.
Vivienne Parry 27:03
I must just quickly go back to Kevin on this. What about touch within a space environment? Do astronauts touch each other? Are they not suited and booted all the time?
Kevin Fong 27:14
Well, I can't help it. I mean, these these things aren't very big. And space shuttle, I never forget how I felt the first time I, I had a look around the mid Decker, the space shuttle, which is basically the size of the smallest bathroom in your house, and used to hold up to seven people for 16 days at a time, you know, and and so they are in each other's faces, literally, for many, many months at a time space station is bigger space station probably has the free floating space sort of, you know, comparable to a to a jumbo jet. But you know, that they, in many ways, and and that they the current astronaut cruise aboard space station are in better shape than us because they are the most carefully screened people who go to work of any occupation probably in the world at the moment and and they launch themselves into space station and they are confident they don't have Coronavirus or they actually do in that regard. They don't have to worry about the same sort of restrictions that we have to about, you know, having physical contact with people who aren't in their immediate Well, they are in their own unique elite bubble social bubble up there.
Vivienne Parry 28:24
What about those having skin on skin touch? Because I'm going to go back to Karen moments talk about digital touch, but skin on skin touch is that possible in the space station?
Kevin Fong 28:37
Well, yes. What you know, as I said that they are in close quarters the whole time. So yes, I you know, in and as much as it happens in, in society in general. You know, I mean, when you really genuinely think about how much skin on skin touch we have with people outside of our own families. In everyday society, it is pretty limited. So so I would guess that there's is, you know, they get as much as we do, I would say on mission and and the crews these days are well selected. And, and tend to work very well together. You know, I mean, the sorts of stories that we had in the early days of human spaceflight. There's a very different personality type, but selects into the astronaut corps. They certainly the American astronaut corps, NASA, they tend to, they tend to have the full range of, you know, emotional repertoire available to them, they fit, they tend to be good people to hang around with
Vivienne Parry 29:32
that. So, Carrie, you're studying digital touch. What's that? And is it the solution?
Carey Jewitt 29:41
Well, we're studying touch in general, and then how it's mediated through different kinds of technologies. So when we talk about touch, we're not just talking about direct touch, like poking someone or stroking someone. We've got what we're calling an extended approach to touch where We're thinking about different layers of touch if you like. So how in self touch so our relationship to our own body in terms of soothing, for example, but also in terms of balance and kinesthetic not understanding of our body in, in space in space, not the kind of space that that Kevin's in but in the world, then interaction with objects and other people. So, and then also thinking about touch in terms of the environment. So there's how you know, the wind, how we interact with the wind, how we interact with, say, like walking across the beach of feet. So we're trying to extend touch from just the way that actually technology makes us think about touch a lot, which is a hand or finger on a very flat, we just kind of screen. So our view of touches is quite broad. I don't think digital technology is the answer around touch in this particular moment. But I think it is a answer, answer that that perhaps can just help us imagine different kinds of touches, rather than trying to mimic the touch that we're all missing so much. Maybe we can use technology, even the kind of flat screen of zoom, which we're all really fed up with by now, I think. But how we can use technology to reimagine what it is to touch one another will be close and present with one another.
Vivienne Parry 31:34
It's very interesting that one of the additions that has occurred with zooms and teams and all those kind of things is being able to look at people as if they were sitting in an auditorium. In other words, they're touching each other.
Carey Jewitt 31:48
Yeah, I think the way that that were positioned in relation to each other on zoom is quite interesting and the ways that creates different hierarchies about who's speaking and who isn't as an attempt to set up some social norms. But we're still struggling with that, I think. And also, the ways in which technology like zoom and all the other kind of platforms puts us in little boxes. So I think it makes us all very static. And I've been working with some dancers we've been, we've got a project called the lockdown diaries. And what we're exploring is how you might use the dance skills of touch and movement, like dancers have an amazing awareness around their own bodies and in space and in relation to one another when they have to have that that's part of the dance training. And so what we're asking is, how might you use those dance skills to give lay people like, like me, I'm not a dancer, a way out of routes out of thinking about lockdown, like feeling safe, as we kind of move out into the world. And something we're doing them is together with dance called Lisa may Thomas is designing online immersive art experiments to help people explore and sensitise themselves to touch and explore how they might come out into the environment and the world again, like connecting with what Peter's saying about the need to be together, and how to manage that through a new awareness around touch. And I think technology is a way likes a fair in that case, we're using immersive virtual reality experiences to explore and attune people to touch I think I think they have a lot of experimental possibilities where we can try things out and explore, explore our own sense of touch as well. And so in that sense, amongst all of this kind of really, really difficult time, I think it is possible that that that we can use as a positive moment to kind of pause and take it as a time for all of us, especially, you know, thinking about young people who may be spending more time on their own, to kind of rethink and imagine ways of being close on ways to feel connected, because often we can't be with our loved ones. And so we could, you know, use technology, even you know, Instagram photo diaries, ways to explore our own our own relationships to touch one another. And, and those visual technologies can, can be used to kind of create a heightened sense of touch as well through through talking about touch through, you know, giving ourselves a hug whilst looking at someone else. Like how could How can we play around, I suppose, I mean, the positive things is that people are incredibly imaginative about how they communicate. So this kind of all for time really pushes us to the limits of how to imagine how we might communicate with us. But I think technology is a can be really key in that in that reimagining touch.
Vivienne Parry 35:00
I just wanted to ask a final question, which is about optimism. And, Peter, can I come to you on optimism? Are you optimistic that we'll come out of this in good shape?
Peter Fonagy 35:15
Well, I think Carey appropriately said human beings are incredibly resilient. And we have survived far worse than this. So I'm sure that we will come out of it will become out of it entirely and damaged. I think those of us older people will do I mean, you know, middle aged and upwards, younger people entirely undamaged. I'm not so sure. And whilst I like being optimistic, and I really want to be optimistic about all this, but I do think that we have to try a little bit harder to make things easier for young people if we do want to fully recover, without that being, quote, lost generation, the uncertainties that we create about exams about University about everything else. This does take its toll on the people who are the sharp edge of that uncertainty.
Vivienne Parry 36:12
And of course, UCL has an absolutely critical role to play in this. And Kevin, optimistic, yeah.
Kevin Fong 36:22
I've thought about this a lot over the years, and especially given the jobs that I've had in anaesthesia and intensive care and working with air ambulance, you know, and the crews that I work with see awful things all the time. And I've always wondered, you know, how they manage with that? And I say all that because I think that I came to the conclusion, as you've just heard that, that we are on the whole and incredibly resilient species. That is the history of humankind, isn't it that, that in the history of humankind, we have seen horrific things happen to have given kin at close range over and over again. And we've picked ourselves up and we've gone again. And that's not to say that there is no injury in this there is clearly plenty of injury. But but but I think to say that there is optimism because that's what we do. We get ourselves together again, and we go again as a society but there needs to be some understanding and needs to be an ability for us to work together to protect one another and to help one another. So that resilience is a thing that is not a property of individuals but a property of the wider group.
Vivienne Parry 37:34
A very optimistic note to end on. Thank you all so much. You've been listening to Coronavirus the whole story. The episode was presented by myself Vivienne Parry, produced by UCL with support from the UCL Health of the Public and UCL Grand Challenges and edited by the wonderful Cerys Bradley, our guests today were Dr. Kevin Fong and professors Peter Fonagy and Carey Jewitt. And if you'd like to hear more of these podcasts from UCL Minds, of course, you would subscribe wherever you download your podcasts or visit ucl.ac.uk forward slash Coronavirus. And it's goodbye for me. Thank you so much.