Interview, November 16, 2020, by Dr. Clemens Heni, political scientist and Prof. Robert Dingwall:
Robert Dingwall is a Professor at Nottingham Trent University and one of the UK’s leading sociologists, having advised on government policy for pandemics since the Blair government of the early 2000s. He is currently part of two advisory groups supporting the UK Government on their response to the COVD-19 pandemic.
Topics of this interview are:
- the role of sociology during the pandemic
- the troubling focus on economy only in the UK – and not on all of social sciences
- the ignorance of existing epidemic plans (for Influenza) during Covid-19
- no scholarly justification for school closures, mask wearing and 2 meter distancing (one meter was the rule before)
- population or herd immunity
- discussion about the Great Barrington Declaration
- nasty defamation of critics in the Guardian (like against epidemiologist Prof. Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University)
- place for critics in the Daily Mail, strange new friends or allies during the Corona crisis
- situation of students in Manchester and the UK during Corona
- mental health problems when locked down
- at the end: a few remarks about Nottingham Forest and football, of course
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHQS671E468