Looking back at our first glimpse of the virus: with David Spiegelhalter

Today, 23 March 2022, marks two years since the UK locked down for the first time in the COVID-19 pandemic.  We relaunch the Plus podcast by looking back to where our pandemic coverage all began, by revisiting our podcast from April 2020.

Back in March and April 2020 one thing was on everybody's mind: the novel coronavirus - now better known as COVID-19. In this podcast we spoke to two people who have become very familiar to many of us over the last two years.  We reported on our first COVID-19 conversation with Julia Gog, an epidemiologist who has been informing the Science Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).  Julia is now a close collaborator with us here at Plus as part of the JUNIPER modelling consortium (as we'll find out in the next podcast).  We also spoke with David Spiegelhalter, Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, who is now a familiar figure through his frequent appearance on radio, TV and in print giving clear and calm explanations about the numbers behind the pandemic.  David told us about how to communicate science during a crisis.  And, at the end of the podcast, we had a go at explaining the maths of herd immunity in one minute.

To find out more about the topics covered in this podcast see:

• Communicating the coronavirus crisis
• How can maths fight a pandemic?
• A call to action on COVID-19
• Taking the pandemic temperature
• And you can find out much more in all our other coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic

The music in this podcast comes from the band eusa. The track is called Now we are all SoB's.