Name: Coronavirus shutdown: How to survive lockdown happy and healthy
Uploaded: 2020-03-24T04:31:06.000Z
Duration: 8 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Joining me now is Susan Mickey, a health psychologist from University College, London, a member of the government's Behavior Science Advisory Committee on the behavioral scientists.

Magda Oarsmen from Queen Mary's University.

Susan Mickey First, the prime minister, is making a national TV address in just over half an hour.

Would you like to see him announcing a full national locked down forcing people to stay at home?

I think what we've seen so far is that people haven't been following the very general advice.

But the advice has only been very general.

That hasn't bean instruction to stay at home, People be told toe, not take part in non essential travel.

But it's not clear what non essential is or to significantly limit seeing friends and family.

So I do think we need clear instructions as to what people need to do, and your committee advises the government.

Do you think, Have you been sending that message to the government?

I should say that I'm speaking as an individual expert, not as a member off that committee on dhe, we submit our evidence on three evidence is taken on board, but alongside evidence that comes from modelers evidence that comes from clinicians and virologists, evidence that comes from people who know about the state of the health service.

All of that gets put into a part and then presumably combined with other political economic decisions, that we're not party, too.

So why do you think the government hasn't gone further faster?

I think it's difficult to know from where I am.

I probably haven't got any more information than other people have.

I think at the beginning there was a concern that maybe the population wouldn't go along with what the government was trying to do in terms of restricting people's freezers and what they used to.

But I think it's become quite clear that the population are not only supportive of what's being done, but one more to be done.

I think that's become very clear over the last couple of weeks.

The population citizens off the UK want the government to go further.

Well, they might do, but I think this is where also, the media have a role to play in reinforcing the necessary changes that we have to make to our lives.

So, for instance, if you see images of people flouting the social distancing rules, then you might use that as a way to reinforce your own behaviors.

If you see images of empty streets than that also has a consequence.

So the extent to which we want actually regulate our behaviors is in relation to how other people behave.

So the more you reinforce the fact that it's important to maintain social distancing and home isolation.

And you see images that reinforce that also through the media, because that's a source by which we receive information is no doubt going to be significant to the way people adapt and change their behavior.

So would you be happy for the government to keep nudging people in the right direction rather than saying, You must stay inside and we're gonna make sure that you do?

I think we have to recognize the responsibilities and roles that we play, and also that our actions have consequences on the immediate people around us.

So on also on top of that, people rely on multiple sources of information to determine how it is that they need to act.

So let me let me just go back to Susan Mickey.

Now, of course, there are significant mental and physical health consequences of being locked inside, Forced to say inside, Are you concerned about the consequence particular people living in cramped flats that this might actually be putting their lives more arrest by forcing them to stay inside?

I think we got to think through the consequences of what people will be asked to do.

One issue that's really important and hasn't been solved has been on the table for a couple of weeks now is self employed people and people in the gig economy.

There are millions and millions in this country, and they can't afford to stay at home.

£90 a week will not feed a family, so the government has to put in place.

Policies that will met make it possible practically financially, materially possible the people to stay at home.

They also need to make sure there's proper resourcing of communities, mobilisation of communities so that people feel looked after and cared for in their own home on also, they may need to make sure that everybody has the community communication channels so they can keep in touch with their family, friends, their loved ones, in whatever way is needed that nobody is cut off.

So there are certain things that need to be put in place very rapidly if this policy is going to work.

Tens of thousands of Italians have bean caught flouting the lock down rules.

If locked down is imposed, and if the prime minister does announce something of the sort, do you think Britain's will beam or disciplined than that?

Well, I think in general what will happen is the Maur that the social distancing and home isolation is reinforced.

As I said, people regulate the way they behave relative to others.

So the Maur that you see people actually staying at home social distancing that will reap, have a reinforcing effect on the wave that each individual decides how to act.

So the more of that that you see, the more likely is that people will be compliant with that.

The issue is how you sustain that for a long period of time.

And if you look at the evidence and there are a range of problems off people living in this sort of isolation conditions, people can get frustrated.

They can get bored, they can get lonely, they can get depressed.

These things get worse over time and also over a long period of time.

People have a tendency not to adhere to it so much so this things need to be attended to.

And is there any guarantee that total lock down of the kind we've seen in China, Italy, France that it works?

Because China is just coming out of that.

We don't actually know if it's going to stop.

A second wave of the infection's doing well.

I mean, there's one thing about will the isolation work in terms of will people stay in their houses and not go out and infect each other is what's happening at the moment.

That's something we can discuss right now.

The issue about it, a second wave really needs tohave epidemiologists and virologists and people who know a lot of by pandemics and that's beyond what I know about.

You've seen businesses closing down went before the government's told him to, the government said.

Is there a sense in which businesses are leading this on the government's following?

Bell, while reiterate, is the main point that I'm making, which is that the Maur signals that you receive from multiple sources and from multiple organizations that adopting social distancing and home isolation.

The more likely it is that you're going tohave people a tear to that.

So the second issue is well want you're in.

Lock down your at home for a long period of time.

How do you maintain your mental and physical health so people will be tempted to want to go out and run?

They can't get to the gym anymore, so we have to be and we are ingenious and adaptive in the way that we can change our behavior.

So there needs to be a positive spin on this, which how can we stay at home and stay healthy?

Exercise, Learn new habit which is what we'll have to do.

So we need to start adapting our behaviors and those positive ways that we can actually do that.

 People are actually interacting with each other through social media or on the phone Maur and so on, and that is needed. 