Sunday, April 27, 2025
Blog Page 343

The parallel pandemic: how should we address the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories?

Katie Child
-
0
The parallel pandemic: how should we address the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories?

Keeping up with current affairs is hard work these days – and the heavy subject matter is only half the story. In the past year we have witnessed earth-shattering political, social and economic upheaval, a sharp rise in the number of misleading news stories, and a general decline in public confidence in mainstream media outlets. Often, there is no guarantee that a claim we read or hear about online is true, false, or – most confusingly of all – somewhere in the murky in-between. Is this something we should accept as part of the ‘new normal’, or should we be taking this parallel pandemic of misinformation as seriously as the virus itself?

Journalists on the front line

As the problem of misinformation has grown increasingly evident, it has become a growing focus for media outlets and other institutions. Many national and international organisations have launched enhanced fact-checking initiatives, and the BBC has even created a specialist post for reporting on disinformation. 

However, covering these stories brings unique challenges. Studies show that misinformation spreads exponentially through social media channels at an alarming rate, so reporters (who are often already under acute time pressure) must scramble to address false claims. Yet in order to debunk ‘fake news’ successfully (and to avoid spreading misinformation themselves), media outlets must ensure that they are producing reliable, evidence-based journalism in response. This has led to criticism that general media response to bogus claims is too slow, allowing the information to fester and spread – threatening public health and potentially corroding faith in the media in the process.

There is also the consideration that, by actively acknowledging and debunking misinformation, reporters are bringing these stories to the attention of a wider audience. It might never have crossed someone’s mind to link COVID-19 and 5G (a connection which is supported by no evidence), but reading a news article on the subject could trigger their interest in this and other conspiracy theories. The media’s role in the fight against misinformation is a delicate balancing act: reporters must tread the line between speed and accuracy, as well as doing a cost-to-benefit analysis of the potential attention they could attract. 

Governmental responsibility

Once misinformation is out in the open, many people look to the media as the first line of defence. In a recent interview with Sky News, the UK defence secretary Ben Wallace supported this, expressing concern that if governments were to increase their involvement in this domain it would set them on the “path to censorship”.

That said, some governments have introduced initiatives which aim to combat misinformation during the pandemic. Rather than creating a strict vetting process for published news (which might indeed be interpreted as a threat to democratic values), the UK government’s current focus is on providing readers with the tools to think critically about the news they consume. Partnering with the WHO, in May-June 2020 they launched a campaign to promote the use of trusted sources to access information on coronavirus. More recently they have encouraged the public to identify and report false or potentially misleading information. On its website the European Commission gives a long list of EU-funded projects which aim to improve digital literacy and fight the “infodemic”. But whilst the impetus behind such initiatives is admirable, one cannot help but wonder if more should be done to stop those public officials who are spreading misinformation in the first place.

The most obvious example of a politician disseminating false information in recent times is Mr Trump. His advice that people should take hydroxychloroquine (despite a lack of evidence regarding its efficacy against COVID-19), his completely unsubstantiated claims about election fraud and numerous other misleading claims pose a significant threat to public health and, more broadly, to the integrity of truth.

Yet Trump is not the only world leader to have prioritised political purpose over accuracy during the last year. In January, French president Macron remarked that he had read that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was “quasi-ineffective” in people over 65. This appears to be a reference to an article published by the German newspaper Handelsblatt which claimed the vaccine only had an efficacy rate of only 8% in over-65s – despite there being no scientific evidence to support this. It would be naïve to assume that Macron’s comment was completely unrelated to the ongoing row between the EU and UK government over vaccine supplies.

To see such senior figures actively misrepresenting information is incredibly concerning. Given their huge followings, there is a strong argument that condemning this kind of conduct from those in the public eye could make a significant difference to the spread of misinformation. A report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that, whilst only 20% of the misleading claims in their study sample were expressed by politicians and celebrities, they accounted for 69% of total social media engagement with misinformation. Targeting misleading claims endorsed by prominent public figures could therefore be a promising avenue to pursue.

Social media regulation: label, delete, suspend

This brings us back to the question of who is responsible for regulating these false narratives. Given the prominent role of social media in the spread, executives are under increasing pressure to take action. Hence why several organisations – including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – took the bold step of suspending Trump from their platforms after the Capitol riots on 6th January. Yet the matter has raised concerns among the international community over the threat this poses to freedom of speech. Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, when defending his company’s decision to ban Trump permanently from the platform, admitted that it set a “dangerous” precedent. 

Suspension is the most extreme form of regulation, preceded by the removal of deceptive posts. Youtube, Twitter and Facebook have started attaching warning labels to content, informing readers that it may contain false or misleading information. Yet whilst this strategy can be helpful, the overall efficacy is debateable. Those who are most susceptible to believing conspiracy theories often have little existing confidence in mainstream media and regulators, and it is unlikely that a warning label will alter the mindset of someone already entrenched in the conspiracy theory community.

The personal touch: breaking through to conspiracy theorists

The answer to countering the spread of misinformation among these groups might come from those who understand its psychology better than most: ex-members. At the start of the pandemic, Erin and Brian Lee Hitchens from Florida thought that coronavirus was a government “hoax” linked to 5G, or at least that it was no worse than the flu. They did not follow any health protocols and both ended up in intensive care with the virus. Brian survived; Erin died. After losing his wife, Brian posted a heartfelt message on Facebook outlining his experience and pleading with others not to make the same mistake. His story received huge international coverage.

Posts like Brian’s have the potential to be relatable to sceptics in a way that mainstream news stories and governmental interventions do not. Nevertheless, the issue of confirmation bias remains problematic. Those prone to conspiracy theory thinking tend to favour information that suits their preferred narrative, and the content they consume and share on social media platforms reflects this. Content which challenges this narrative is most often met with hostility and suspicion. Therefore, although a former conspiracy theorist’s testimony might carry more weight among their intended audience than conventional journalistic or government sources do, there is no guarantee of widespread success. 

The need for critical analysis

Ultimately, the most effective tool against misinformation is probably the general public. Despite the efforts of social media regulators and journalists, there are always going to be some misleading claims which go unchecked. Government and NGO initiatives which offer practical advice on how to identify misinformation are probably among the most effective methods of limiting the spread of unsubstantiated claims. 

We all have a responsibility to look critically at what we read and see, whether this be on social media or a mainstream news channel. Everyone is susceptible to misinformation to some degree and complacency when absorbing news is something we simply cannot afford.

After Covid: the future impact of misinformation

Misinformation during the pandemic is not just a public health issue; it has serious implications for the future of society. If we do not address the problem now, we risk losing the ability to distinguish fiction from objective fact – a phenomenon which some have termed ‘post-truth’. Political analysts are concerned about post-truth thinking as an emerging trend in global politics. Without a universally established version of the truth, governments will lose the ability to resolve conflict within democratic frameworks, potentially leading to outright conflict between and within countries. We are already seeing this in the United States and, to an extent, in the row between Europe and the UK over vaccine supplies. 

Post-truth does not only affect international relations; it affects everyone at all levels of society. Loss of an established consensus of reality could lead to a continued downward spiral of decreasing faith in government institutions and mainstream media outlets. The physical impact of the virus is hugely concerning. But the threat from the parallel pandemic of misinformation – which is jeopardising our collective capability to agree on basic facts – should not be underestimated.

Vaccine Politics: global inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic

Fonie Mitsopoulou
-
0
Vaccine Politics: global inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic

TW: racism

Nothing can be of national or international importance without being imbued with the edge of politics. An event as impactful as the pandemic, which has afflicted an estimated 81.5 million, and led to 1.78 million deaths to date, was always going to be politicized; leveraged for gain, superiority, and influence over other countries. The war against the virus comes hand-in-hand with an international propaganda war. 

In the case of the pandemic, wealthy and powerful countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia and China are able to use the virus for political gain. Vaccine nationalism is employed to gain influence and wield power among their national populations, as well as against other countries, while vaccine diplomacy is used to mend coronavirus-induced tensions and to curry favour among potential allies. 

Less developed countries face a different set of problems, wherein their vulnerability to economic downturns caused by lockdowns around the world, and their lack of an infrastructure to deal with such a health crisis were already threats to their populations. This is exacerbated through phenomena such as vaccine hoarding, wherein only the wealthiest of countries reserve the bulk of the life-saving vaccines being produced. Internationalist movements such as COVAX are attempts at reducing global inequalities in terms of access to these vaccines. Hence, nationalist and internationalist approaches to the pandemic coexist in a world where a deadly threat provides new opportunities for actions to be taken on the political stage. 

Nationalism

A resurgence in nationalism can be seen recently in trends in Europe, the US, and other countries worldwide, notably rising in association with and concurrent to right-wing parties and leaders. Nationalism is the sentiment of one’s country being superior to others, with their interests deserving to come before those of others. From Germany’s AfD, to Spain’s VOX, to America’s President Trump’s “America First” mantra, perhaps the rise in political nationalism primed the world for vaccine nationalism. 

The two main culprits of nationalist behaviour are the US and the UK. These are two of the countries most affected by COVID-19, but counterintuitively so. They are relatively sufficiently developed, wealthy, and have the organisational capacity to have confronted the pandemic in a way which would have mitigated its subsequent overwhelming spread. Yet, even the leaders- the global representatives- of both of these countries fell to the coronavirus, in a stroke of irony that was not lost on anyone. The UK and the US still made sure to manipulate the events of the pandemic for political gain. 

The most glaring case of “vaccine nationalism” is exemplified in the race for the vaccine, as countries raced to be the first on the moon five decades back, and as they scrambled to snatch up regions in Africa at the turn of the century. It is not a novel phenomenon; he who gets there first is able to laud it over the others. It is a source of national pride. Being the first, the biggest, the best, has always been the aim of governments in competition both domestically, with other parties, and internationally, with other states. This has often manifested itself through proxy competitions, seemingly unrelated to a state’s political strength. Nationalist competition can even be found in sports, as, during times of heightened political tensions, countries vie for first place. This was the case in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, with national athletes acting as vehicles for their governments as countries tried to prove national supremacy in the lead-up to a World War. 

Furthermore, vaccine nationalism is not just reflected in attempts to produce or approve a vaccine first, but more importantly, it is fundamentally about which country is able to provide for its citizens by securing sufficient doses of the vaccine so as to halt the rising death toll. According to the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, higher income countries had collectively reserved nearly 5 billion vaccine doses by the 8th of December through bilateral “advance market commitments”. The US has entered into six of these deals, thus securing more than 1 billion doses, a surplus of vaccines to ensure that if any of the trials fail, the other trials can offer them some security. However, the problem this poses is that vaccine production cannot keep up with global demand, therefore, for some years, many less-wealthy countries will be bereft of vaccines while the coronavirus continues to spread. From a scientific perspective, the global dissemination of COVID will be tackled most effectively if vaccines are distributed equitably, so that all countries can  inoculate populations so as to achieve some degree of herd immunity while vaccines continue to be produced. A nationalist stance, therefore, will only prove to be deleterious in time. 

UK

Expressions of vaccine nationalism

With two American companies (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) and an English one (AstraZeneca, in collaboration with the University of Oxford) in the lead, this particular race has always been intolerably tight. Even though Pfizer was able to get approved by the UK, the EU, and the US, in a similar timeframe, the UK could still take pride in being the first to sign a deal with them and be the first to distribute the vaccine, thus “lead[ing] humanity’s charge against this disease”, as a tweet from Alok Sharma, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, read. This does not go to say that the English agreed with this sentiment, as the top commenters retorted with “Lose the jingoism – it’s not even a UK vaccine” and “alternatively they’ll remember the UK having one of the worst death rates and the worst economic impact due to poor governance”. The UK was also the first country to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on the 30th of December 2020, coinciding with a period which has seen daily COVID cases in the UK at an all-time high: on December 29th, there were 53,135 new cases. 

Therefore, vaccine-related nationalist narratives were a tool used by the UK government to salvage some public support and credibility. The methods with which this occurred was through public statements: Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries all made the claim (on either Times Radio or Question Time) that the rapidity with which the vaccine was approved was a result of no longer being constrained by the European Medicines Agency. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has publicly stated “I just think we have the very best people in this country and we’ve got the best medical regulators. Much better than the French have, much better than the Belgians have, much better than the Americans have. That doesn’t surprise me at all, as we’re a much better country than every single one of them, aren’t we?”. The Tory government have engaged in discussions about branding vaccine kits with the Union Jack–a potent national visual symbol that makes it very obvious who the British citizens should thank. In line with such symbolism, the UK called it’s immunisation programme “V-Day”, alluding to the language used for their victory in the Second World War, thus further inciting patriotic fervour around the topic of the vaccine. 

Political incentives 

The current Conservative government stands to gain from setting up the quick approval of a vaccine as a metric for a successful state. This is a strategy that can be described as setting milestones at accessible points, and celebrating when they have been achieved. This is to detract from the recent highly-publicised political losses the UK government has seen, both on the domestic and international fronts. On its local stomping-ground, the Conservative party has been accused of having failed to tackle the coronavirus crisis with any semblance of competence, with charges ranging from spending extortionate amounts (£12 billion) on a sub-par Track and Trace system which yielded few returns, to discriminatory lockdown regulations being placed on northern cities such as Manchester, compared to London, with only a fraction of the financial support. The government has further come under fire for failing to address child food poverty, limiting free school meals over vacations and obligating UNICEF to provide aid for these English children for the first time, undermining the UK’s credentials as a leading developed global power. The UK appears to onlookers as though it has been overwhelmed by a global health crisis disproportionately to other- potentially less wealthy and well-equipped- countries. 

Internationally, the UK was seen to be hurtling towards the 31st of December–the date of the final deadline for a Brexit deal with the EU–without a deal in sight. In the worst-case-scenario of a no-deal-Brexit, there were fears of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines being held up due to disruptions in the movement of goods between Belgium and the UK, which would be an issue given that these vaccines must be refrigerated at -70C. While the Conservative government, under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was able to negotiate a deal at the eleventh hour, issues with trade and borders made the government appear as though they are frantically trying to make momentous, wide-reaching decisions with little time and little bargaining power. 

Most significantly, in the UK, the vaccine has become yet another battleground for Brexit: a vessel for the anti- or pro-European sentiments held by nationals. Depending on who you ask, British rapid vaccine rollout is either a national triumph, resulting from Britain removing themselves from the shackles of tedious European Union bureaucracy and legislation, or, alternatively, it was only made possible through international collaboration (BioNTech is a German company, and the drug will be produced in Belgium, the home of the EU headquarters). 

Implications 

Attempts to import politics into the vaccine may have adverse impacts. Firstly, according to Stephen Reicher, a social psychologist at the University of St Andrews, the stance of those who are hesitant or against the vaccine is informed by mistrust of politicians, who are accused of lying about the vaccine for political or monetary gain, and such propaganda only confirms these suspicions. Furthermore, in the eyes of those who give more credence to science, these government spokespeople are exposed as either being scientifically illiterate-having very poor knowledge of how the vaccine-rollout process occurred- or being prepared to lie about it for political gain, which does not inspire particular faith in them. This can have both negative effects on attempts to finally end the pandemic, as well be counterproductive for the government, politically. 

US

Vaccine hesitancy

President Trump’s methods to use the vaccine for political advantage are exemplified in his attempt, in the early days of the pandemic, to ensure that the CureVac vaccine would be “only for the USA”, in exchange for $1 billion. In an act akin to this one, the US was accused in April of diverting mask shipments meant for Germany for itself, in a scramble for scarce PPE in the midst of “mask wars”.

It is important, however, to place such actions within the context of American vaccine scepticism. All efforts to secure vaccines for the entire population are futile if the internal political implications behind the vaccine are not dispelled. This debate is wrought on a grassroots level. Within the wider conversation about whether the government and these big pharma companies are to be trusted- which has been waged on adjacent battlefields, such as that of mandatory mask-wearing and on the oppressiveness of the lockdown restrictions- the vaccine has not gotten through without intensive scrutiny. With a massive anti-vax movement having already taken root in the US, the coronavirus vaccines are treated with suspicion, especially given that vaccines are known to take up to a decade to produce. Operation Warp Speed, the name given to the US efforts to funnel billions into vaccine research and cut through red tape during this time of urgency, significantly expedited this process, thus inciting unease among sceptics. Only 60% of Americans have indicated they plan on being vaccinated, while 21% are reluctant to do so under any circumstances. Cynics wondered whether the October target for the completion of the vaccine would be rushing it unduly (and potentially dangerously) for the sake of having it out before the elections in November.

The link between the vaccine and politics is bidirectional; not only does the existence and supply of vaccines inform whether or not a government is perceived as effective or successful, but the inverse also holds true. When high-profile public figures and politicians put their weight behind the vaccine, this inspires faith in it among a dubious public. When individuals such as president-elect Joe Biden receive the vaccine on public television, this contributes towards the reduction of vaccine hesitancy. That being said, someone who is deeply convinced by the conspiracy theories is unlikely to be swayed by such a display; radical groups are always equipped with some response to rebut any information that runs counter to their beliefs. 

RUSSIA

In August, the Russian government claimed to have created a successful vaccine, which, in a propagandist nod to the aforementioned space race, is called “Sputnik V’. On its website, it claims to be “the first registered vaccine against COVID-19”, establishing itself as the winner of this implicit competition. This did not go without significant resistance, however, as the US, the UK, and Canada accused Russia of sending hackers to steal vaccine information from their drug companies and research groups. Russia responded by calling this a smear campaign, attempting to undermine what could “potentially be the most effective vaccine out there”.

It must be noted that President Putin had a political incentive to make this announcement prematurely, and to have produced a vaccine first even if – by scientific standards – it was not ready (skipping Phase-3 trials, it had only been tested on 100 people). Currently, his trust ratings are experiencing one of their deepest troughs, and he just passed the constitutional amendment to presidential terms which would allow him to stay in power indefinitely. If he is to be around for a while, he has to be well-liked. It is a regime-preserving strategy, akin to those employed by other non-democratic governments. Furthermore, in an exigent parallel to the Cold War, this can be perceived as a move for Russia to stake itself as an alternative pole of power, to carve out its own sphere of influence in a competition that so far has been dominated by Western countries. The fact that the vaccine was only to be released on a limited-scale (for healthcare workers and at-risk populations) seems only to indicate that it was done for political gain, and not because the vaccine was actually safe and ready for distribution.  

CHINA

COVID-inspired anti-Chinese racism 

The final key player is China. The source of what is dubbed by people like President Trump the “China virus”, or “Wuhan virus”, many are thus made fully aware of who to blame for the pandemic and this wanton loss of life. The tale of the virus having originated from “bat soup” provides the context for which people can attribute tragedy to foreign customs. The virus acts as a guise, which enables racist behaviour. Asian Americans are subjected to virulent hostilities. Justin Tsui was told to “go back to [his] country”, Abraham Choi was spat on, called a “Chinese f-ck”, and that “all of you should die, and all of you have the Chinese virus.” Jay Koo was threatened with murder by strangers on the street, which he closely escaped by coughing and pretending to have the virus. In America, those of Chinese descent have historically been accused of bringing disease, with landmark legal cases like that of Jew Ho v. Williamson revealing how pandemia and racism go hand in hand. This is an age where political tensions between the US and China are at an all-time high, as signified by the breakdown of diplomatic relations in July with the US ordering China to close its consulate in Texas, and China doing the same with the US consulate in Chengdu. In this modern Cold War, both countries paint the other as the evil counterpart to their force of good, as they vie for global influence through diplomacy, military force and mercantilism, the coronavirus is just another means through which this animosity can be manifested. 

Vaccine diplomacy 

China is determined to utilize vaccine diplomacy to rectify the negative image the coronavirus has tainted them with. Their leading vaccine (among nine candidates), aptly named Coronavac, is borne from biotech giant Sinovac. China intends to utilise this as a tool with which to endear themselves to other countries: Brazil, which was the country third-worst affected by the virus, has been promised 6 million doses of the vaccine by January. 

Terms native to the field of international relations can be imported into discourses around vaccine politics, which have presented themselves as a new channel through which to exercise power. Along with “vaccine nationalism” and “vaccine diplomacy”, one also encounters accounts of China attempting to become a “vaccine superpower” by providing vaccines for masses of people. In May, President Xi Jinping promised to share the vaccine with the world, setting China up to be favourably compared to the US, where President Trump was preoccupied with buying up a large bulk of production of new vaccines in a nationalist, protectionist move which only antagonised other countries. Another example of vaccine diplomacy can be seen in China’s proposal to prioritise distribution of their vaccine to Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and the Philippines, in a clear attempt to take advantage of the health crisis to forge or strengthen alliances. 

Internationalism 

Economic interdependence 

Nationalism does not characterize the efforts to create and distribute a vaccine in their totality. Internationalist sentiment can also be found, such as in the early days of the coronavirus, when the EU donated protective equipment to China, and later on, when China did the same for Italy. These displays of international cooperation and solidarity can be taken as evidence for a more liberal or idealist conception of international relations: not only is cooperation possible between countries; in cases such as a global pandemic, it is arguably necessary. It is rare that a country can isolate itself from the effects of the pandemic taking place in the rest of the world, as Australia and New Zealand have done. Ultimately, the fact that there is a global movement of people and products means that a country that is especially suffering from the coronavirus cannot just be left to fend for itself. This can be seen in the Kent lorry crisis, this December, which occurred at the border of the UK and France upon the announcement of the emergence of a new strain of COVID. However, it is not only the virus that can seep into a country. Given that countries are not self-sufficient, economically, and in terms of national production, a necessary corollary of international trade is that if a trade partner’s economy and production are stunted from the effects of the pandemic, it is likely this will have an adverse impact on your country too. The RAND corporation has found that vaccine nationalism can actually harm rather than benefit the countries in question: high-income countries such as the UK and the US stand to lose $119 billion per annum if less affluent countries do not promptly receive a sufficient share of the vaccines. It would only cost $25 billion to do so, thus yielding an overwhelming net gain.

Developing Countries

Economic vulnerability 

Lockdowns around the world are expected to result in “the worst economic downturn since the great depression”. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are offering billions in financial aid to countries struck by COVID, which, in less economically developed countries, can have the crucial effect of limiting the risk of civil conflict, which is observed to result from negative exogenous fiscal shocks. This is a problem that is not often included in western calculi of the impacts of the coronavirus. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres claims that these economic effects will spillover and undermine responses to the pandemic: “most African countries lack the financing to adequately respond to the crisis, due in part to declining demand and prices of their commodity exports.”

Vulnerability to the health crisis and “guinea pigs” for vaccine testing 

The experience of the pandemic has been generally different in the Global South compared to the Global North which dominate news and discourses on COVID. Nepal has less than 500 intensive care unit beds in the entire country, despite a population 28-million-strong. This is a problem that threatened even developed countries like Italy. Brazil is one of the countries most affected by the virus, following only the US and India. This is suspected to be because they lacked both the infrastructure to institute a robust testing and tracing system, as well as sufficient PPE. Political infighting and institutional incompetence have resulted in Brazil lacking a comprehensive vaccination plan.

Furthermore, significant testing for vaccines takes place in developing countries, which has often invoked an ethical debate, including criticism of individuals in these countries being used as “human guinea pigs”, with the implication that their lives are dispensable. The larger part of Coronavac testing is taking place in Brazil, with the New York Times calling the country the “ideal vaccine laboratory”. These attitudes are residual from imperial narratives about the “family of civilised nations”, with those not meeting the “standard of civilisation” being barbaric; read: subhuman. These narratives can subconsciously spillover into real-life policies regarding global vaccine distribution, risking a status quo wherein wealthy states are able to hoard vaccines while countries in the Global South are left waiting and wanting. With a global pandemic, time translates directly into human lives: the passage of a single minute signifies another death in the US alone. 

However, wealth and health have long been conflated. The endemic problem of diseases in developing countries remaining untreated despite the availability of treatment is omnipresent, even prior to the coronavirus. In 2015, 1.6 million people in African countries died of diseases such as HIV-related illnesses, malaria, and tuberculosis. Such deaths can be prevented through existing medicines, however, due to lack of funds, these countries lack the medicines to deal with health crises that developing countries have already overcome. 

COVAX and the EU

The COVAX facility is the response of higher-income countries to this question; an effort to make the global distribution of vaccines more equitable. This sentiment is echoed by Guterres, who requested that the vaccine be treated as a “global public good” as opposed to “private commodities that widen inequalities,” per WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.  COVAX is a strong example of international cooperation: it is spearheaded by international non-governmental organisations such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and the European Commission. 172 economies are now engaged in discussions to potentially participate in COVAX, with 80 of these being self-financing countries which will be providing support to the 92 countries eligible to be supported by this programme. The aim of COVAX is to “discourage national governments from hoarding COVID-19 vaccines and to focus on first vaccinating the most high-risk people in every country” by “lower[ing] vaccine costs for everyone”. Dr Ghebreyesus has cited COVAX as being a direct response to vaccine nationalism. Only time will tell how successful the execution of this project will be. Similarly, the EU is acting in its capacity as an international organization to centralise and coordinate vaccine distribution, ensuring that “All Member States will have access to COVID-19 vaccines at the same time on the basis of the size of their population”. 

However, it is crucial that nations follow through on commitments to reduce vaccine inequality. The ACT-Accelerator Programme, developed by the WHO to quickly produce and fairly distribute vaccines, makes a desperate plea on its website: “Recent contributions bring the total committed to over 5.6 billion US$ – but an additional 3.7 billion US$ is needed urgently, with a further 23.9 billion US$ required in 2021.” The swine flu outbreak of 2009 is a prime example of vaccine nationalism gone awry, where developed countries hoarded large quantities of the vaccine in the early days, requiring the WHO to coordinate donations of 10% of the vaccine supplies of nine of these countries. However, even in this case, international cooperation was used to mitigate this issue. 

Conclusion 

Ultimately, however self-explanatory and simplistic such a claim may be, global cooperation is necessary when dealing with a global crisis. There is little room for nationalism, and little to be gained from a policy of “each man for himself”. The vaccine and the coronavirus, inextricably interlinked, have become channels through which national political interests can be realised, a new, shiny tool in the arsenal and war-chests of governments to wield power and gain political capital. There is something morally disquieting in extracting political gain from a tragedy that has robbed people of their lives, their jobs, and their livelihoods. However, it would not be the first time that death on a large scale has been politicised. An obvious analogy to this is war, yet it is also a non-comparative one; war is inherently political and nationalist, constituted of territorial disputes and invasions of countries’ borders and sovereignty. It is clear that this politicisation has negative consequences, as countries forgo correct procedures in a juvenile strife to be first, and keep vaccines to themselves, seemingly forgetting the principle of sharing. It is likely that cutting through (sometimes necessary) red tape would have occurred in any case, as doctors, biotech companies, and governments alike are doing everything in their respective powers to fasten the proverbial tourniquet and finally cease this incessant haemorrhaging. Hopefully, international cooperation will come to fruition, and the coronavirus can be tackled in one, concentrated, effective effort, as opposed to differentially, with LEDCs lagging significantly behind wealthy countries in terms of access to life-saving vaccines. 

Artwork by Mia Sorenti

Air ambulance crew help distribute Covid vaccines

Anvee Bhutani
-
0
Air ambulance crew help distribute Covid vaccines

The Thames Valley Air Ambulance crew have been helping with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout across the Oxford community.

The charity delivered advanced medical care to 1497 patients across the Thames Valley and beyond last year. The staff at the air ambulance service have received their own injections and have been volunteering at vaccination centres to help deliver the jabs to patients alongside assisting in non-clinical roles. They are encouraging people to take up the offer of a vaccine when it is made available. 

Simon Wetenhall, Senior Critical Care Paramedic at Thames Valley Air Ambulance, told the Oxford Mail: “After such a tough year, the amazing progress of the UK’s Covid vaccination rollout has been a shot of good news amongst the gloom. That’s why, when I saw the opportunity to become a volunteer vaccinator in my local community, I jumped at the chance to help in the fight against Covid. 

“For some people, the trip to get vaccinated may be the first time they have left their home in months. When people arrive for their vaccination, they tell you how much it means to them. For many, it is a sign that they might be able to see their children or grandchildren again soon. It is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Image: Allen Watkin / London Air Ambulance Explorer.

Oriel JCR proposes ‘New Rules’ be played for new rules

Daisy Aitchison
-
0
Oriel JCR proposes ‘New Rules’ be played for new rules

An unusual JCR motion at Oriel College proposing that Dua Lipa’s hit song ‘New Rules’ should be played during future debates has passed a second vote.

The full motion reads: “When any constitutional motion is proposed in a JCR open meeting, the song “New Rules” by singer-songwriter Dua Lipa (2017, Warner Bros.) must be played in the background. This clause can be revoked for a specific constitutional motion at the Chair’s discretion.”

Speaking to Cherwell, Oriel’s JCR President said: “I hope that the new motion helps to raise the spirits of JCR meetings. Constitutional motions are often dry discussions, so it will be a welcome change to have some musical accompaniment. Of course, Oriel JCR will maintain the same democratic rigour and formality that its Open Meetings have always had.”

‘New Rules’ peaked at number one in the British singles charts in September 2017. The song went on to win best single at the BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards in the same year, and has since been streamed over one billion times.

The track featured on the artist’s debut album, first released in June 2017. Since then, Dua Lipa has gone on to perform at Glastonbury, and her most recent release ‘Future Nostalgia’ made it to number 1 in the UK album charts.

The singer also has plans for the post pandemic era, with concert tickets for her upcoming performances on sale across the UK and Europe. The tour is due to start in September this year and run until mid October.

The last changes to Oriel JCR’s constitution came in May 2019, with 2018 seeing the last substantial amendments and admission to the college’s governing body.

Image: Justin Higuchi. License: CC BY 2.0.

Emo-ology: An Introduction

Joel Dungworth
-
0
Emo-ology: An Introduction

Joel Dungworth tells all on the origins of emo music.

If you stopped someone in the street and asked them to describe ‘emo’, they are probably going to imagine Gerard Way dressed in a bad Halloween costume screaming about vampires and wanting to join some kind of gothic version of your 6th form band. Other options include teenagers smeared in black eyeliner and strapped into unnecessarily tight skinny jeans, or gaggles of school kids all with perfectly suspended bangs hanging over a smoky eye. The associations of ‘emo’ are firmly rooted in the subculture that emerged in the mid-2000s; as all good subcultures do, it had its own, very recognisable, soundtrack, with the likes of My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Paramore blasting out of the iPods of angsty adolescents across the world.

Much of this music is fantastic: powerful, emotive, heart-on-sleeve songs drawing in an almost cult following, which is still very much alive today (MCR’s announcement of a comeback performance received nearly 200,000 likes on Twitter). But ‘emo’ music did not suddenly materialise when Gerard Way screamed ‘IM NOT O-FUCKING-K’ into a microphone. The genre has a rich history. Artists throughout the 1990s wrote and produced intimate, personal pieces of music which shaped and moulded the style which would appeal to so many Doc Martens-wearing Year 10s. 

Emo’s urtext is hard to place; but, it is often said to be the 1985 album Rites of Spring – by the band of the same name. Along with Embrace (1987) – funnily enough, by Embrace – this music contributed to the post-hardcore sound dubbed ‘emocore’. This label, however, was rejected by the artists at the time and used with an accompanying sneer by critics. These albums are well worth a listen, though, and form the starting place of my early ‘emo’ recommendations.

The rough screeched vocals of songs like ‘For Want of’ and ‘Give Me Back’ are a staple of the genre; their chugging guitars and crashing riffs anticipate a sound which would linger for another 20 years. The lyrics resurrect the artists’ painful memories and facilitate an outpouring of internal anxieties; they are fiercely personal, yet the appeal of these songs lies in their acuteness. They scream the feelings that tear us apart – exemplifying the emotional ferocity music can assume. 

When the early 90s saw the emergence of grunge, it highlighted the potential for subcultures fuelled by misanthropy or anguish to hold our attention. The likes of Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker and Weezer developed a sound heavy in guitar and confessional, pained lyrics which played off the grunge and ‘emocore’ sensibilities, whilst carrying a tenderness and free-form structure to their songs which ran throughout the genre in the 90s. I would suggest ‘In Circles’ by Sunny Day Real Estate, ‘Fireman’ by Jawbreaker and ‘In The Garage’ by Weezer as three songs to get to grips with this style of emo. In fact, this may be a better place to start than the stuff from the 80s. If you know some classic pop-punk tunes then you will be able to hear some of their tropes in this music too. Subsequent bands like Saves The Day, Piebald and Jimmy Eat World form a kind of intermediary between the two, removing a bit of the screaming but keeping the introspection. I would recommend a listen to Clarity – the sophomore album from Jimmy Eat World; here, the band are also drawing on a slightly different ‘emo’ sound, that which developed in the American Midwest. 

Self-declared emo lord Matty Healy (of The 1975) has spoken about how his love for country music stems from his interpretation of it as a form of ‘emo’ expression (just one with more banjos). He is onto something here. It is worth thinking of this style if you delve into the realm of Midwestern emo. Artists like Mineral, The Promise Ring, Rainer Maria, Cap’n Jazz and American Football make music which sounds a little bit like people screaming in a garage – it is raw, unfiltered, passionate, and strangely mesmerizing. The song structures wander freely about, and the lyrics take on a poetic melancholy to rival The Smiths.

There is a homemade intimacy, like the echoing production of Joy Division or the cassettes of underground favourite Daniel Johnston. The instrumentals form their own warbling melodies, whilst the singers cry out their deepest inhibitions – odes to the cathartic power of music. They undermine sterile cultures of emotional repression and allow internal anxieties a central place in artistic expression. It should be added that a content warning is relevant to many of the songs I am discussing here – they cover topics such as depression, emotional isolation and social alienation, but it is also this confessional bravery and sensitivity which gives ‘emo’ music its magnetism. 

Mineral’s ‘If I Could’ perfectly captures the sense of self-doubt which can so often prevent us from fulfilling our romantic dreams; Rainer Maria’s ‘Summer and Longer’ looks back at a loss of youth and the struggle to help a friend with accumulated yearning; Cap’n Jazz’s ‘Oh Messy Life’ offers an existential outburst on what defines us as human beings. These songs can easily be dismissed and mocked, but if you really listen to the poetic desperation of ‘emo’, it carries intensity not found in many other styles of music. There is a playlist below – queue these songs, immerse yourself in their uninhibited grit, and you might just develop a newfound respect for early ‘emo’ music which is perhaps missing from perceptions based on Patrick Stump’s sideburns and Pete Wentz’s fringe. 

Listen to the accompanying playlist on Spotify @cherwellmusic.

Image credit: Cancha General via Creative Commons.

It Can’t Happen Here … Again? The GOP After Trump

Patrick Duggan
-
0
It Can’t Happen Here … Again? The GOP After Trump

As tempting as it may be to simply move on from the Trump presidency, four cathartic years now over and the American republic redeemed, we ought not to look upon the political currents which swept the 45th President to power as mere spent forces never again to re-emerge. Indeed, these same currents are far from having dissipated, the country is still considerably divided, and we might therefore do well to pay attention to what the former President himself, hours before leaving office, swore in front of cheering crowds: ‘we will be back’.

The fact of the matter is that Trump’s brand of right-wing populism is likely to remain, for the time being, tarring the American political landscape — even with Trump muzzled and potentially out of the political picture. With this in mind, the challenge of the GOP will be to integrate voters with whom Trump’s message resonated, maintaining their support for a party about which, prior to Trump, many exhibited a total apathy.

Fundamentally, the question of the hour is will the GOP rise to the occasion — will they prove resilient enough to survive a fundamental departure from traditional Republicanism unscathed, and will they want to?

To try and answer this question, we need to go back to the election. Right off the bat, November 3rd was no land slide — not by a long shot. Had Biden not won as well as he did, the GOP’s 74 million votes would have been the highest in US history.

Some two months later, the events of January 6th helped shed some light on just how many Republicans could be considered part of the ‘MAGA crowd’ — remaining loyal to the President despite his electoral defeat. For starters, according to a Politico–Morning Consult poll conducted in the days following the Capitol riots, Republican support for Trump had only declined by 8% meaning he could still boast the support of a 75% supermajority in the party.

Later that week, a YouGov poll revealed that approximately 45% of Republican respondents had in fact approved of the Capitol riots, and a further 12% didn’t register any particular emotion either way. The same poll found twice as many Republicans laid the blame for the unrest at the feet of Joe Biden (35%) than of President Trump (13%), and 63% approved of his conduct that week. Trump has many problems, but as of this moment a lack of support is not one of them.

It is in government that the story becomes slightly more nuanced.

On the one hand, House Republicans seem unshakeably loyal to the former President — take the 138 of them who challenged Pennsylvania’s presidential results following the Jan 6th riot or indeed the 197 who voted against Trump’s impeachment.

Granted, 10 House Republicans did indeed vote to impeach Trump, but the events of the past few days seem to indicate that they are being made an example of. Such was indicated in the observations of former Ohio state Rep. Christina Hagan when she commented that she had ‘never seen a greater amount of backlash for any one single vote’ — with primary challenges and cuts in donors springing up with remarkable speed.

On the other hand, the senate may well be another matter altogether, and one that may trouble the GOP going forward. Despite being content to enable Trump’s worst excesses over the past five years, if the recent claims of the respected investigative-journalist Carl Bernstein are to be believed, then there are at least 21 Republican Senators who have privately ‘expressed their disdain for Trump’. Indeed, many of those named by Bernstein are those same senators who so vociferously denounced Trump in his run for leadership of the GOP in 2016, suggesting the party is less than united.

Taken together with Senator Mitch McConnell’s accusations that American democracy was being sent into a ‘death spiral’ by the former President and Senator Lindsay Graham‘s begging of the President to accept the election results on the senate floor, and it’s not impossible to suggest that Senate Republicans may see a Trump-less party as an opportunity to navigate back towards a more moderate, traditional conservatism.

The problem is that the moment these same senior Republicans make moves to distance the GOP from Trump, the ensuing conflict with the House Republicans may well cause the party to split — something likely to stir the tens of millions of voters attracted more to Trump than traditional Republicanism.

All these calculations are being made against the backdrop of reports that Trump himself is interested in founding his own ‘Patriot’ party — funnelling supporters away from the GOP and towards the camp of right-wing populism. Questions of likelihood aside, the mere threat of this may push Republican grandees towards maintaining the current party platform for fear of haemorrhaging voters.

In trying to consolidate its position, the GOP will be fully aware that even if the Trump wing shrinks significantly, the party is already home to demanding factions wielding disproportionate influence relative to their size. Evangelicals only comprise 14% of the American electorate and yet their demands over abortion and gay marriage continue to shape Republican policy. It’s not impossible that a similarly committed Trump wing could likewise influence the future policy of a new GOP.

But if Republicans are indeed able to successfully balance the competing demands of their voters and of political and moral respectability, then there are certainly signs that they are well placed to make a comeback in 2022 and ‘24.

Trump’s gains among Hispanics might be expanded significantly if the incumbent were less known for repeatedly using them as a national scapegoat. So too could it be argued that the large turnouts of the past two elections make it possible that a less controversial figure could broaden Republican appeal — although granted the allure of Trump was his iconoclasm.

If they play their cards right, Republicans don’t even have to broaden the appeal that much. Only once since the election of Bush Sr. in ‘88 has a Republican candidate won the election with the popular vote — and although the Georgia run-offs put gerrymandering and voter-suppression back in the public eye, the GOP has a history of playing the political system when expedient to do so, and perhaps they will again. Less nefariously, the GOP could replicate Trump’s 2016 election plan by simply playing the Electoral College to their advantage.

But at the end of the day we just don’t know what the Republican Party will look like, if Trump himself will make a comeback, nor how his supporters will vote. If voters will have any patience with the Republican ‘swamp’ remains to be seen, and the idea that any party grandee could so much as think about imitating Trump’s style or his appeal is frankly ridiculous.

What we do know is that there are tens of millions of people to whom Trump’s message appealed directly and that, even through insurrectional violence, they were willing to stick with him. We would therefore do well to keep in mind that when Trump, to cheering crowds of these same Americans, remarks that ‘we will be back’, the rest of us would do well not to dismiss him.

Image credits: Gage Skidmore

Review: ‘Breaking and Mending’ by Joanna Cannon

Charlotte Rose
-
0
Review: ‘Breaking and Mending’ by Joanna Cannon

I wrote in a previous review that my previously unchanged top five books had been shaken up in 2020 for the first time in years. Joanna Cannon’s memoir Breaking and Mending has done just that. In little over 150 pages, this book made me laugh, cry, and shut the pages to sit for a while and think. It made me both despair and revel in my decision to study medicine.

Published in 2019, Breaking and Mending is Cannon’s first non-fiction book and is one of the best I’ve read for a while. In it, Cannon writes of her decision to take three science A-levels and apply to study medicine in her thirties, after completing a first-aid course she noticed advertised in a newsagent’s window. As a medical student myself, I have countless copies of junior doctors’ autobiographies and non-fiction medical books. However, after studying all day, I usually prefer to dive into fiction afterwards rather than hear about the trials and tribulations of the career that awaits me. I often find that it is not a wise genre for me to read. As someone who has had more “should I drop out of med-school?” wobbles in three years than I care to admit, it seems foolish for me to choose to read about the ways in which it can break a person. Yet, despite its title, Breaking and Mending felt different. This is a book about a medic who loves to read and write. One who felt as though she was breaking under the stresses of medicine but found her feet and her love of it in psychiatry – a speciality she always wanted to pursue. After describing this to a friend, she replied, “This sounds like it was written for you!”. And yes, honestly, I loved it. Unlike other books in this genre, Cannon really focuses in on the idea of belonging, and that of ‘wild cards’. She writes of how ‘Psychiatry became [her] landscape’ where she was ‘the most comfortable [she] had ever been in [her] life’. I found this a real comfort as I start studying in the hospital this year; something I am equal parts excited and terrified about. This book taught me so much about kindness, empathy, and how our stories are what unites us as people — all things I will take with me onto the wards and into conversations with patients. Some of the chapters reminded me of works by Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life, which focuses on her experience as a palliative care doctor. Both women care deeply about their patients, which really shines through in their writing.

Throughout Breaking and Mending, Cannon discusses what it was like to be an older student in medical school, as well as her journey into her foundation medical years and beyond. Following concerns about her age, her outburst to a medical school admissions officer was on the surface quite amusing. However, underneath the humour, there was a sadness to it. She said, ‘I completely understand if you reject me. Reject me because you don’t think I’m smart enough. Reject me because you don’t think I’ll make a very good doctor. Reject me for the hundred and one reasons you reject people but please – please – don’t reject me just because of my date of birth, because that wouldn’t be a very good reason at all, would it?’. Since the vast majority of my cohort began medical school aged 18 or 19, I realised that the age demographic of medical students is not something I’d thought much about before. It was therefore really eye-opening to read from someone with a different perspective. Cannon discusses how ‘there is a certain comedy value in being the junior doctor on a team where everyone else is a very great deal younger than you are’. The General Medical Council’s 2017/2018 Medical Schools Report stated that the first-year intake of standard entry medical students across the UK was 7,321 whilst the number of graduates was just 715. The standard entry students were not broken down into varying age ranges and I could not find any information on the average age of medical students in the UK. This surprised me and I feel it may be off-putting to those who are contemplating beginning their route into medicine at a later date. Although it seems inevitable that many future doctors start med-school immediately after sixth form following much discussion of careers and next-steps, this is not the only route. If anything, Cannon’s later start made her stand out as a doctor. She was taking richer life experience into a degree (and eventually a career) all about people and their experiences.

Towards the end of the book, Cannon writes that on her first day of medical school she was told that ‘there are two kinds of doctor: white coats and cardigans. Those who love the science and those who love the people’. She understandably disputes this, stating that there are as many kinds of doctors as there are people – a sentiment that I wholeheartedly agree with. However, much of the book focuses on her experience as a ‘cardigan’; a people-loving doctor, something that others weren’t always appreciative of. Her approach to medicine made a truly positive difference in many of her patients’ lives but was also partly responsible for her burnout when the weight of the world she was working within became too much. The descriptions of these events were honest, moving, and emotional and will stay with me a long time after reading them. Cannon writes, ‘Perhaps it might have been possible to face the misery and unfairness inside it [the hospital] each day with the right support… I wondered how someone could walk through a landscape and be at the very lowest point of their life and yet no one who passed them by even noticed’. Her evocative language here invites reflection, particularly in the current pandemic, on how we look after the people who look after us. According to a recent study by the British Medical Association, almost half of the doctors surveyed were currently experiencing ‘stress, burnout, emotional distress, or other mental health condition[s]’. Cannon writes first-hand of her experiences with this throughout Breaking and Mending. From my experiences so far within the clinical medical school, the support can be excellent. However, having read the work of Cannon, and many other medical authors, it seems that this is not always the case in the workplace. Changes must be made to protect doctors and other healthcare workers who do so much with so little.

Alongside these poignant stories, there were also many tales of hope scattered throughout the book, a dose of which I feel very much in need of this winter. Towards the end of the chapter in which she describes her burnout, Cannon decided to ‘give it a week. If, after a week, [she] felt the misery creeping back, [she] would unfasten [herself] from medicine forever. No matter the shame and the humiliation, and no matter the inevitable chorus of ‘I told you so’’. She writes of heading to the speciality she had always wanted to pursue (psychiatry) and working with so many amazing people; getting a chance to really hear their stories and listen. Although this was heart-warming to read, her words do raise larger questions about the culture of medicine; the idea that doctors should ‘stick it out’ and keep a stiff upper lip. There are not many other professions I can think of where there is as much ‘shame and humiliation’ associated with leaving a job that causes this degree of emotional distress. Other ex-doctors such as Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt, have written of similar experiences. Perhaps it is time to revaluate our collective attitudes towards doctors and realise they too are only human.

I am in awe of Joanna Cannon and can’t wait to read more of her work, although I wonder if any of her fiction can match the brilliance and the beauty of this. For me, it is Cannon’s complete honesty and authenticity which make this an astounding read and I’m eager to see whether these hallmarks also come across in her fiction. I think Breaking and Mending is the perfect book to read as a medical student, a doctor, or anyone who wants to have their heart warmed by tales of genuine compassion and kindness. In particular, to any other medics who are just getting ready to tackle the world of wards and real-life patients, I cannot recommend it enough. Though it slightly terrified me, it also made me very excited and taught me a few wise lessons that I don’t think will be found on the page of a textbook or a slide of a lecture. I know I will come back to Breaking and Mending time and time again to remind myself of what’s important, not just in medicine, but in life.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Review: Arlo Parks’ ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’

Sophia Zu
-
0
Review: Arlo Parks’ ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’

Two and some years have passed since Arlo Parks’ debut single  “Cola” in November  2018. The world has changed, but her music has stayed constant. In the middle of a catastrophic and isolating pandemic, her music still brazenly clings to humanity through tugging lines of melody for and about people; she reminisces about the way we care and love and yearn and ache for each other and for ourselves. Her first album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, is a tender portrait of her microcosm of the world that feels universal.

Parks envelops us in names—Charlie, Eugene, Alice, Caroline, Kaia, Violet—, a rich world of characters sang through poetry. She brings these guests in gently, carefully, and with painstaking empathy. Despite the jazzy and sometimes poppy lilt in the tracks, her lyrics paint a tableau of depression, nostalgia, and internalized pain. Parks stands in the centre of this tableau, breezing over the pain in stanzas. In “Hurt”, she reminds Charlie, whose “heart [was] so soft it hurt to beat” and has since turned to alcoholism, that his pain “won’t hurt so much forever”. In “Black Dog”, a particularly devastating song about depression, she promises Alice that she would “lick the grief right off your lips”; she “would take a jump off the fire escape // to make the black dog go away.” 

The overwhelming warmth and affection Parks has for the world around her is stunning; for burnt hibiscus, reading Sylvia Plath, for amethysts masks just how young she is. Aged 20, she is just one month older than me. “My album is a series of vignettes and intimate portraits surrounding my adolescence and the people that shaped it,” Parks explained to NME; “it is rooted in storytelling and nostalgia—I want it to feel both universal and hyper-specific.” She sings openly about her bisexuality on the album, particularly in “Green Eyes” and “Eugene”. In the former, she details a two-month romance with a girl, Kaia, before their break up because she “could not hold my hand in public // felt their eyes judgin’ our love and beggin’ for blood.” Parks adds: “I could never blame you”. 

I wish that your parents had been kinder to you 

They made you hate what you were out of habit 

Remember when they caught us making out after school

Your dad said he’d felt like he lost you 

The tonal dissonance between the lyrics in the album and its rhythmic groove can distance listeners from the emotional core of the album. Nearly every song is laced with record scratches, empty drum tracks, and a variation on a guitar riff. The pleasant sameness of Collapsed in Sunbeams does not detract from how incredibly lovely and affirming Parks is throughout. Her warmth is pure sunbeam: visible categorizations of light fighting through obstacles to illuminate us and the world around her. 

Image credit: Charlie Cummings via mindies.es & Creative Commons.

In Conversation with Jill Nalder

William Foxton
-
0
In Conversation with Jill Nalder

“It’s a bit of a whirlwind at the moment…” Jill tells me, “the response is a bit unbelievable.” She has just finished watching the third episode of Russell T Davies’ new series, It’s a Sin, which centres around the lives of five friends living in London during the peak of the AIDS crisis. It’s a Sin tells the story of their loves and losses as they navigate life under the threat of this deadly illness. Jill is at its very centre, her experience of the time providing part of the inspiration for the story.  

The show itself has been an instant-hit, its characters striking a chord with Davies’ audience: there’s the rambunctious ringleader Ritchie (Olly Alexander), self-assured Roscoe (Omari Douglas), sweet-tempered Colin (Callum Scott Howells) and oh-so-charming Ash (Nathaniel Curtis). The gang is led by their matriarch, Jill (Lydia West), the heart and soul of the show, whose character is loosely based on Jill herself and her tireless work in the fight against AIDS.

The character was created after a series of intimate discussions with Davies, a long-term friend of Jill. Using her experience of the time, and of course his own, Davies constructed this semi-fictionalised representation of the London queer scene in the 1980s in all its magnificent technicolour.

Jill vividly recalls the time. When she wasn’t honing her craft at Mountview, she was spending her time with a glorious group of friends: going out, getting drunk and ending up at someone’s place to continue the fun. More often than not, these after-parties took place at the iconic Pink Palace, as portrayed in It’s a Sin, the actual apartment Jill rented with her friends at the time.  

“We had such fun there!”, she tells me. Though she notes that the actual Pink Palace was “way more glamorous” than its televised portrayal, recalling a large mock-Tudor building complete with pink velvet curtains, pink sofas and chandeliers. “It was not very student-y in the conventional sense,” she tells me.

Parties at the Pink Palace were a semi-frequent occasion. Jill describes cabarets where guests would perform their “party piece” for an adoring audience. The parties were on the wilder side. “You don’t think of it as hedonistic,” she tells me, “you just think of it as life! Now, when I look back, it seems hedonistic because it’s so care-free. It was a sense of freedom. That great freedom you have when you’re young.” Though she’s quick to point out that, unlike the show, there was “certainly not sex in every room 24/7.”

Over time, the Pink Palace became a legend, taking on a mythic status within the community. But, for Jill, it’s the nights spent with friends she remembers more than anything. “You become very close,” she tells me, “and then you become lifelong friends. If you’re lucky. I lost a lot of those people…so what would have been lifelong friends was not to be.”

Jill’s first encounter with AIDS was the death of a friend from college. “He’d gone home because he was ill…and then suddenly we heard he had died. And nobody knew what had happened to him. He was 26,” she tells me. There had been rumours that he had died of AIDS, but this wasn’t something that was ever explicitly said.  

We get a sense of this in the show, murmurs of an unknown illness disproportionately targeting homosexuals. In the first episode, we see Richie at university, eyeing up the boys he fancies. Alexander brilliantly captures the bright-eyed wonder of closeted desire. It’s fun and flirty and inconsequential. Though, in the background, two women discuss rumours of a deadly disease. “41 men with this cancer thing and they all died at the same time in New York,” one says, “and they were all gay.”

There was little information out there at the time, Jill tells me, partly because AIDS was a new disease and because it was predominantly targeting “a stigmatised community.”

The LGBT community itself didn’t pay much attention to the rumours at first. Davies captures this denial perfectly. There’s a monologue in the second episode where Richie dismisses Jill’s concerns. He playfully pokes fun at the theories: “they say it arrived from outer space on a comet”, “they say God created it to strike us down”, “they say Freddie Laker spread it when he introduced cheap flights”.

“Don’t you see what all of these things have got in common?” he asks, before gleefully proclaiming: “they’re not true!”

You want to believe him. You want to lose yourself in the dizzying lights of the Pink Palace to the soundtrack of Patrick Cowley’s Do You Wanna’ Funk?, to be blinded by Davies’ intoxicating portrayal of the London queer since, to ignore the reality of a deadly disease striking down young men in their prime.

 “Nobody listens, do they?”, Jill says, “I’m a cautious person, I was warning my friends, telling them what I’d heard, trying to make them take it more seriously. Perhaps I was being a bit idealistic. People tried to brush it off. They were in denial. They were scared themselves. But it creeps up on you.”

“And then there were those terrible commercials…” she recalls, “with the tombstone smashing…”

The commercials she refers to were public information adverts issued by the government, warning people not to “die of ignorance.” Voiced by John Hurt, complete with apocalyptic visuals and a science-fiction score, they were chilling clips intended to alert the general public to the dangers of AIDS. Jill appreciates the effort, but sees the flaws in the campaign:

“I don’t think it was a particularly good commercial. It stigmatised people.”

The advert itself announces, in an ominous voice, that “so far [the disease has] been confined to small groups, but it’s spreading…”

“It makes those ‘small groups’ totally stigmatised,” Jill tells me, “people were horrible to Chinese people when they first found out about COVID. I think you can imagine what people were like to gay men if they thought they were spreading AIDS.”

Jill was sworn to secrecy by friends who’d received a diagnosis. “They were desperate not to be labelled. They were desperate not to think that they couldn’t have the life they wanted.”

They also feared the news might reach their families: “they felt ashamed…they didn’t want to let their families down. There’s a desire to protect your parents because you think they might be stigmatised too. It doesn’t stop with the person; some people would be horrible to the family too if they heard rumours. It becomes a stigma for the entire family.”

Jill describes visits to hospital wards that were “full of young gay men”, all of whom “carried a great shame and sadness.” Some had visitors, like Jill, though many were too ashamed to tell friends and family. She took on a maternal role, caring for friends suffering from the disease who felt like they couldn’t tell their family. It was a physically and emotionally demanding task, but she never considered walking away from those in need: “Once you’re involved in somebody’s care, particularly when you know their life is not going to be long, you can’t let them down. You can’t turn your back on them.”

Jill still remembers how it felt to be told by friends that they had been diagnosed with the illness. “You’re just a listening ear at that point,” she tells me, “It’s emotional, but you’ve got to try and not get emotional. You have to be positive about it, though you still feel that sadness and that trauma…they’re telling you something that you know is going to kill them. It’s hard.”

As more of her friends were diagnosed, Jill became a fierce campaigner, throwing herself into activism to help those in need. She set up the charity, West End Cares with a group of seven fellow West End performers. The charity is still going, nowadays under the name TheatreMAD Make A Difference. Since its inception, they have raised upwards of £10 million in the fight against AIDS. Their most recent event was a performance of Rutter’s Requiem on World AIDS Day.

As part of her work with West End Cares, Jill funded vital research, gave money to those who were unable to work due to the disease and helped raise awareness and solidarity for sufferers. She was relentless, organising late-night cabarets, competitions, raffles, carol concerts, etc. “We did loads,” she says, “you have no idea.”

But why did she care so much? Why did she dedicate her life to battling a disease that predominantly affected gay men?

“That was my world,” she tells me. “That was the world I moved in, and they were my friends. And if you love somebody, you want to help.”

In popular culture, straight women within the gay community are often cast as the counterfoils to their WASPish queens. Think Grace Adler in Will & Grace or Amanda Tanen in Ugly Betty. These relationships are characterised by bitchy put-downs and unrequited attraction. Jill’s friendships, as portrayed in It’s a Sin, were a much richer and more meaningful interaction, the epitome of straight allyship. And shared joy.

There’s a striking line in the final episode of the series, where Richie reminisces about his time spent in the beds of all the boys he slept with, reflecting on their collective legacy. “They were all great,” he says, “that’s what people will forget. That it was so much fun.” Is Jill worried that people will forget?

“I don’t think they will now,” she tells me, “I think Russell has made sure of that. People will have to think twice if they thought it was all doom and gloom. That’s his legacy.”

And hers too, I point out.

“It’s incredible, quite incredible to think that you have any legacy in this world. But Russell’s legacy…oh my god it’s enormous. When you’re a part of that, it takes you by surprise, I tell you. And those boys…the foundations they laid. It’s so amazing to be part of that, truly.”

Jill lost four very close friends to AIDS, but is reluctant to tell me much about them.

“I can’t say any names because of their families,” she says, “I’d like to shout their names from the rooftops, of course I would. They were incredibly brave human beings. And if it was any other illness than AIDS I would. But it wouldn’t be right to their families. It’s not for me to decide that.”

“But they were fabulous,” she says with a grin, “they were all just…fabulous.”

Image credit: Jillian Edelstein

Expenses of Oxfordshire MPs reach almost £1 million in 2019-2020

Angela Eichhorst
-
0
Expenses of Oxfordshire MPs reach almost £1 million in 2019-2020

Oxfordshire MPs claimed expenses worth cost taxpayers £885,224.19 in 2019-2020. According to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA for short), Oxford East MP and Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds spent £187,991.98 in 2019-2020, just shy of the average £188,295 annual spend of MPs who were elected before December 2019. 

Dodds’ costs were payroll (£161,136.84), office costs (£13,452.26), accommodation (£12,673.64), MP travel (£600.94) and staff travel (£128.30). Dodds’ overall spending has remained relatively stable compared to her 2018-2019 total of £187,681.63. The 2019-2020 year saw a noticeable reduction in her office and travel costs, however, an increase of £16,530.82 in staffing made up much of the difference. 

Witney MP Robert Courts was the second most expensive MP in Oxfordshire, costing taxpayers £184,161.56 in 2019-2020. Largest causes of spending were staffing (£141,162.92), office costs (£13,675.38) and rent (£19,781.63). 

Layla Moran, MP of Oxford West and Abingdon, cost taxpayers £173,665.94, spending £130,072.44 on staffing, £21,093.07 on accommodation, £18,110.94 on office costs, £2,487.71 on staff travel and £1,901.78 on MP travel. 

Victoria Prentis, MP of Banbury spent £119,590.10 on staffing, £21,636.92 on office costs, £19,847.52 on accommodation, £7,160.00 on MP travel and £2,463.61 on staff travel, coming to a sum total of £170,698.15. Included in the figure is Prentis’ £2,823.36 spent on agreed arrangement costs for volunteers, which is higher than for other Oxfordshire MPs. 

Henley MP John Howell spent 154,580.58 in 2019-2020. The smaller sum in comparison to other Oxfordshire MPs may be due to lower office costs (£122,745.07) and no entry for MP travel. Newly elected Wantage MP David Johnston claimed £14,125.98 in his first year. Johnston’s expenses were significantly lower than the new MP average of £40,869 in the first year.

Image Credit: Cicero Group. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

1...342343344...2,487Page 343 of 2,487

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley