hello there welcome to the program i'm hala my he'd seen restrictions meant to help stop the spread of covert 19 they're not going away anytime soon as governments ease locked owns they've imposed safety measures like mandatory face coverings and social distancing but people are growing increasingly frustrated with those rules in europe tens of thousands of protesters have defied bans on mass gatherings the so-called anti corona rallies attracted conspiracy theorists and vaccine campaigners as well as far left and far right groups who say the measures violate personal freedoms but government leaders insist the restrictions must stay in place especially as cooler months approach in the northern hemisphere will bring in our guests in just a moment spread 1st this report from domenic cain in berlin where the biggest march took place on saturday. the weeks the daily number of new. you coronavirus infections in germany has been rising yet for these people in berlin what matters most is their right not to observe any restrictions not to wear masks not to follow social distancing and to show their anger at the politicians who have imposed them because of the killing is illegal eilis is illegal the whole government is illegal everything is illegal and corona is just a medium to heavy flu a pandemic that is being used to enslave us humans. that view is not shared by the police who tried and failed twice on friday to persuade the courts to ban the demonstration saying the protestors posed a serious risk mentioning d.m. of and of me was going on and that's these are people that we can assume as coronavirus skeptics have taken no precautions in recent months in a time when infection numbers are increasing we don't believe these gatherings to be responsible. the protesters are made up of many different groups some from the political fallout of society some from the far right what unites them is a sense of injustice and rights being lost demonstrations like these pose this country's politicians a serious ethical dilemma forcing them to balance on the one hand the rights of individuals to protest against government measures with which they disagree and on the other hand the rights of the wider community to be protected as far as possible from the risk of coronavirus infection. it's a risk ministers say is growing but glimmers is just some. the problem is the numbers are too high too early given that winter is coming and we don't currently know what effect it will have and hell the flu and other illnesses will affected the numbers are too high at this early stage and. that's why they or thora to use have tried so hard to prevent seems like the us and why they are so fearful of what effect so many people might have when they're in such close proximity to each other without masks dominic kane al-jazeera berlin. well for more on this i'm joined by our guests all of them are in the u.k. today in london we have heidi larsen director of the vaccine confidence project and professor at the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine in boss dr baratz punk and they are he's a senior clinical lecturer at the university of exeter medical school and a specialist on emergency preparedness for ite bricks and pandemics and also in london we have donna dawson a psychologist specializing in personality and behavior one welcome to all 3 of you let's start with you professor larson given the scenes that we've seen in germany can you blame people for for taking to the streets and for being sick of these restrictions because this pandemic has been going or knife for months and there doesn't appear to be an end in sight. well i certainly empathize with the frustration by many people in the public about this extenuated lockdowns and mass squaring and social distancing the korean teens are coming back . but that's partly because because people have let their guard down as it were a sinking thanks for getting better. the story of the i mean this has been embraced it's interesting that it's both the extreme left in the extreme right in our confidence research we've seen a trend over the last 510 years of the the vaccine sentiments which is another dimension of the current protests these anti back seen. that they're becoming increasingly polarized and this has become highly politicized and there has been from the beginning with vaccines certainly you know it's relevant here a tension between my individual right and a public health right so i am precise with the frustration it's difficult though when the behavior of a group like this really has it and i absolutely serious risk to the rest of the public doesn't i see you know that along there don't. you specialize in pandemics of course you must be concerned when you see crowds of 800000 people who are protesting against these restrictions but again a someone who was in a lockdown for around 5 months i mean i got pretty sick of it you can't blame these people i mean how long are people supposed to be locked down in their homes and unable to travel to work for that doesn't appear to be an end in sight at this point. thank you. i'm very disappointed i feel very sad germany has had a examiner's record in managing it coronavirus call it 19 these and then it seems they have done a wonderful job in europe and therefore i feel even more sad that in the summer months where people have got frustrated and they are deciding that there will not be a god our case numbers have gone down therefore the pandemic has gone and that they can do as they wish this is a failure of communication i feel really disappointed because what we ought to have continued is a long written why use message is continuously not propaganda signs to shoulder people that the virus is still here it is still social a think it is causing illness and people if they don't regard it like we see in these pictures they will get infected and some of them will die i mean this is a failure of communication it's a great pity. in terms of perhaps this is a failure of communication but again i point to the longevity of this donna dawson you specialize in it in personality behavior and certainly from the u.k. government's response they were very very reluctant to impose food locks on measures because they were worried about how long people would be able to keep up the. to live under these sorts of restrictions see think the u.k. government might have been vindicated in some way given the scenes where 56 months down the track now people are sick of it and the virus still hasn't gone away. i remember at the beginning of the pandemic when they were doing daily briefings from number 10 there was one scientist that said this is going to go on for a very long time. he was rather muted and kept in the background but it rang a bell with me and in hindsight it looks as though pure fear can motivate people for about 2 months but about after 6 months people's behavior begins to resort to self interest there's a very fine line between self preservation and community. thoughtfulness or community survival and we're at a tipping point now it seems to me that more and more of those under 40 and particularly those under 30 are deciding that they are no longer vulnerable because there has been a gradual easing of some restrictions and with the typical immortality that you think they have they've they've gone about their business in a kind of almost or a tele tory way to make up for lost time so you've got a split now you've got younger people who think they're fine they're ok their rights should no longer be impinged on and you've got older people and those who are more anxious and with mental health issues who are getting many more and more paranoid and that the 2 sets of people are getting more polarized so you know this is this is quite problematic and as we sail into winter i do wonder what's going to happen particularly when unemployment figures start to go up and the money the government is paying out for those who are out of work dries up i think we're going to see more rebellion and more individuals taking further action but other groups of people who have been shielding will become more paranoid and more isolated so this is what i'm expecting to see it's a fairly grim picture of all 3 of you present here and that kind of run counter to a lot of the measures the a lot of the communications we get from governments there's a lot of emphasis in europe of trying to open up restore tourism and certainly put some weight behind the economy. those economic concerns they also have public health implications as well in terms of the mental health impacts of people who aren't working not to mention the children who live in abusive households the vulnerable people. who need to get out of their house to a safe space. do you think there has let me turn to you dr prank. carney i beg your pardon do you think that we've been focused too much on covance and less on the secondary impacts which can be every bit as dangerous if not more dangerous in the way that governments have tackled this pandemic. yes i think both issues are very important and they have to be tackled at the same time i'm very concerned just as our psychology colleague has just said that with poverty with loss of employment we expect a storm of disquiet and destruction to follow when people lose their jobs and livelihoods and got very little to lose you find that they don't wish to be part of our behavior community that is asking them to behave in a certain way therefore i feel you do not plan in september for september you need to be planning ahead and be aware what is coming and put in control measures now even now it's not too late because in about 2 to 3 months time when all the benefits and all the support systems have gone and people have lost their livelihoods i expect a winter of discontent therefore it would be better to get the communications right now and communicate it and and really this is a completely new way of living and we've got to change we've got to sort of say we're going to be poor as a result of economic decline and shut down with what and why it is that is circulating now we've got to have solutions and we're going to have a consistent solution all members of society it has to be done but this is a very depressing message to bring people who've already had a fairly depressing 2020 on the whole professor larsen and i hope you see. the see there's any hope on the horizon certainly people are investing a lot of stock in the possibility that vaccine is a vaccine the way i see of this crisis. well i think i think we've got a few different measures then the vaccine is the one intervention that will has the potential together out of the current situation of lockdown and masking but i think what the reality is one we don't have a vaccine yet but we do need a mix of interventions and and i think that one we do have time before we get a vaccine proven safe and effective a number of them look quite promo promising we need to use that time to build their confidence in that too and i think that for some people who might not who might have their otherwise hesitations about sexy when it comes to a situation where getting a vaccine can let you go back to work let you go back to school let you travel again their decision factors are going to be different so i think that there is hope i think that that is you know the light on the horizon as it were but in the meanwhile. there are ways had kind of extreme measures of either total masking distancing lock down and no work or or the or opening things up to help the economy along and psychology frankly. but we have to do a better job of bringing it back in the middle ironically these extremists who you know want to say stop all this masking stop all the social distancing are also say are also interfering with actually what could be you know a better approach to getting things back on track which is to do it safely and i think that we need to shift our our lens there and do that in the meanwhile preparing for a vaccine and there we will get through this but. where does this come from because we say it 16 mists here against my skin here against vaccines but the the say separate images are just in sweden is against masks in public so and from the layman's perspective when you have so many experts saying good for you and then another one says masks are not good for you people listen see. well it's a good point and i perhaps i should say some who have extreme views i mean in the in the. protests that we've been seeing some of the sentiments that are coming out are more extreme but there are a number of levels of people's. both what they are there calculated decision they don't think it's worth they don't think they need to use a mask of certain settings so they don't think you know the distancing as any less confusing one place since 2 major is one place world or health organization says you know one thing the government says another you go into another a certain country and that gives another 18 you know instead of it's like one and a half meters. so it is confusing and i think people have to also use their common sense i mean these are not i mean ironically things like masking social distancing people can own some of the resistance to vaccines as they may feel like it's coming from an elite science or not clear you know they don't feel like they know enough about the process somebody else's injecting them but we have an opportunity with 'd these interventions to be publicly ok ed let me turn to you donna dawson i want to get your take on this why do you think we are seeing a lot more pushback from people about wearing masks. because there are a lot of scientists who say look this helps so why don't we see much pushback from people it doesn't make sense. because there's too much inconsistency even within one government the u.k. government itself has made many u. turns has given rules without clarity has an added to them hasn't explained things clearly enough and people start then reading between the lines and saying well if they don't know what they're doing or they appear not to know what they're doing i will use my common sense and make my own decisions we need more clarity and when we talk about unification that's communication from the top down the government being very clear i mean a lot of people will laugh and joke about we're not allowed to integrate with more than 2 family bubbles and yet we consider it an airplane next to somebody or we can go to the pub but we can't socially distance very effectively in a theatre so there's too many and consistencies and people are saying well this doesn't make any sense the other thing that i think is happening is the virus has become slightly unreal to most of us if you don't know somebody who's been very ill or died from it it doesn't seem real you can't see it you can't put your finger on it and what i would like to see is maybe some more testimonials from people of all age groups saying what their experience has been with the virus because this idea that it's just a small flu bug that you know you can you can get over there are too many people that have suffered a long time with it and there seem to be some long lasting effects afterwards i'd like to see more of that on the news and maybe a little healthy dose of fear we would go a long way because people have lost that now they seem to think that with the easing down of some restrictions everything's ok and because they don't have this virus around them is somehow has disappeared and of course this is human nature again if it doesn't affect you directly and it's not in your way then you're going to ignore or step over it the paper can is this something you're gree with it we need more fear in the middle of this deadly global pandemic where we've all been terrified. and i'm at consistent we don't want people but that's not only i'm. if you don't see 8000000 people person and you don't see a damaged person following the infection then you think this is all made up stuff and what is really coming up and clear to me is the level of education and the ability of people to work it out for themselves what to say what will it mean for action how to protect my star how to prevent myself getting infected there is such a lot of people being able to work it out for themselves we've got to do it for themselves but then we've got to do it consistently and properly and and repeat it furthermore we were talking about vaccines a minute ago i do not think the vaccine is the answer because even if we sent sensibly find a vaccine what we should be really doing is prevention hard it means novel one actually is our arms we need to spend millions in preventing the emergence of new viruses if we don't then we've been 20 years from here we will be back again discussing a new pandemic which we could have prevented so we really need we need to plan and prepare and work on the group venture not new viruses emerging in the meantime how we got consistent messages and got repeat them because people say i don't know where it is not there but it's a lot of this also depends of where you get your consistent messages from and this tiny sense of the debates around vaccines because let's face it there is a debate about vaccines and certainly with a vaccine being talked up before the u.s. presidential election or a vaccine being released and russia a lot of people are going to be quite skeptical of this so perhaps a vaccine may not be a solution but a lot of countries are pending their hopes on one so professor larson given the the skepticism in the last. trust's right no a right in vaccines which is being amplified during these marches that we're seeing in places like germany there's also marches in the u.k. how do we how do you win back the trust of people that vaccines and treatments are effective well i agree on the point that we need to. build much more awareness about the scope and scale of of this disease so that people actually believe that covert exists and what they're at risk because if they don't have that they're not going to be interested in a vaccine but in terms of the safety and effectiveness of the back seeing one of the big anxieties now is that people keep hearing it's fast you know it's everything from warp speed to the 1st one there and then to scientists perhaps and certainly to politicians fast is good to the public fast means they're taking short cuts it's not going to be safe it's too risky so i think we need to use this time to build much more awareness about the fact that they're not faster because we're short cutting an old process these are new technologies there are new opportunities we haven't really explained why things are faster we have a new financing mechanism we didn't have for instance for a bola and it was set up because of a bola so there was money there to fund ok so i think that we have time let's use it ok where in the dying minutes of the survey some going to put the same question to all 3 of you and if you could answer it as briefly as possible. are you hopeful that 2021 will be better because let's face it 2020 hasn't been anything to write home about it's let me start with you donna dawson. i think we have to have some hope that we've learned some lessons from this year we know we may not like what we have to do and we may find it boring in tedious and a bit scary we're going to have to make major long term behavioral changes we're going to have to get into some habits that persist and that is about not just looking after ourselves and our immediate family but thinking of the person next to us our neighbors our communities we're going to have to think about protecting them as well we're going to have to use our common sense and we're going to have to think about trying to return slowly to what we used to know as our lifestyle with some measures of protection thank you very much thoughts are con can hear your thoughts. what if we do a lot of training probably in 20202021 maybe better and i want people to look at you know if we and your the train of 20202021 will be better trained to do that will equal 2021 goal get it right got the ok let's work hard work hard now for tomorrow a better tomorrow thank you very much in the final 20 seconds are yours professor larsen. yes i am hopeful for 2021 there may be a vaccine which will certainly change the picture i think we will be at a different stage in reactor damage it will be a difficult time economically as we recover but i am really hopeful that will be an a and a better place in 2021 ok so difficult times ahead but hope prevails thank you very much indeed to all my guests professor heidi larsen. and donna dawson and thank you for watching at home remember you can see the program again any time by visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion head to our social media we have facebook page shift facebook dot com for inside story join the conversation on twitter at 80 inside story or tweet me directly at alamo. for me in the entire team here in doha is by fanatics thank. thank. you. to 0200 we is the government not to take the necessary action to really address some of the structural issues we listen i still think that travel is the safest mode of travel and to spend that we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on the boat is their own image can change the way we see the wound if we had not seen this we would be talking about it it can spark mass action or serve the interests of the powerful he treated this moment for a follow opportunity that can obscure the truth this is a legitimate news story but this play and the talking points are pretty identical it can forge narratives all right through the listening post gives you the full picture on the reporting in the field means i often get to witness not just new as this is breaking but also history as it's unfolding crossing from serbia to hungry to read one day i might be covering politics and the next year i might covering protests. but what's most important to me is talking to people understanding what they are going through so that i can convey the headlines in the most human way possible. we believe everyone has a story worth hearing. played an important role in protecting human. face. it's you who have created hate division. u.s. president donald trump is accused of inflaming a racial tension after a shooting in portland but his supporters fought with wyvil demonstrators. some are about the same this is i'll just have a live from doha also coming up the lebanese.