covid and therefore tough measures to keep r below one but also required more research and support from the nhs who found it quite difficult because it was a new disease and because of its nature presenting in many different ways, they found that long tarmac difficult to categorise at first and so with simon stephens will work together to bring forward clinics that could look across the range of conditions that are mostly gathered under the term long covid. i cared a lot about this for personal reasons as well as professional. we did not need to sign off from the centre, we just got on with it. do you happen to know, notwithstanding the early days of 2020, the campaign about long covid wasn t launched until october, do you know why there was that potential lag in the communication side of the debate? side of the debate? yes, i think it was essentially side of the debate? yes, i think it was essentially bleak, was essentially bleak, understandably the clinicians found it