Pandemics, Politics and Public Health

Getting To Better Together

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have such a frightening impact right across the world, it exposes very significant deficiencies, in so many different ways, to the quest of Getting to Better Together. In the first place, there continues to be a lack of shared understanding of knowledge about the basic science of viruses and other infectious disease agents, and how they spread through communities to achieve pandemic status. Adding significantly to the complexity to the situation is an all too frequent lack of trust and respect for those public figures who are attempting to do the best that they can to get on top of the ever-evolving situation.
Richard’s guest in this episode, Matthew Mason, provides some very welcome and extremely valuable explanations of matters right across this spectrum from the relatively simple biology and epidemiology of pandemics right through to their immense socio-economic, political, and public health complexity. Matthew, an educator and researcher in public health at the University of the Sunshine Coast, is a specialist in the prevention and control of infectious diseases, in emergency management and clinical governance. With enviable clarity, he explains the challenges presented, to policy makers in particular, by the common argument that it is either the health of the public or the health of the economy that deserves primacy.