Straight Talk – Dr David Heslop, biosecurity and infectious diseases expert

Doctor David Heslop is one of the world’s leading experts in major disasters, infectious diseases and biosecurity.

An Associate Professor at the University of NSW, Dr Heslop’s work focuses largely on pandemic response, preparedness and research. Amongst many other roles, Dr Heslop works as a Senior Medical Advisor for the Australian Defence Force and has currently been playing a very active role in helping the the New South Wales Government, the National Rugby League and other organisations respond to COVID-19.

Mark said he “really wanted to get a definitive expert on Straight Talk to cut through all the noise and hyperbole in the media about this pandemic.”

“I’m sick of hearing politicians talk about it. I’m sick of hearing commentators who have no f*cking idea talking about it.”

Mark asks Dr Heslop all about COVID-19, how it likely originated, the politicisation of masks, whether you should wear a mask, how the 1.5 metre social distancing rule came about, the decision-making process at the highest levels of government and crucially, Dr Heslop tells us about the major lessons we can take away from this pandemic.

The lessons from COVID-19

With COVID-19 restrictions still in place across the country, Dr Heslop says that there are lessons to take out of the past few months, to better prepare us for future pandemics.

“We’ve learnt that we need to be adaptable. Economics and health are flip sides of the same coin in my point of view.”

“Epidemics are in fact closely tied to economic activity because economic activity is human behaviour, its people’s interactions.”

“If we’ve got a society where people’s interactions could not be adapted in any way to any unforeseen circumstance. I can seen that in some countries where, with COVID, the just can’t change. They’ve got no capacity to change. People have to go to work because they don’t have any savings for example.”

“There is going to be another pandemic at some point, but it will be much sooner than the last big one, which was the Spanish flu 100 years ago.”

“If we run a society where how we interact is so inflexible, and there is no redundancy there for us to be able to move into what is a safe way of operating in response to that, then we will go through another cycle like we have just seen.”

The truth about Victoria’s numbers

Dr Heslop has played down some of the media hysteria around Victoria’s increase in COVID-19 cases, saying it could have happened anywhere else in the country.

“I don’t feel any ill will towards Victoria or how they’ve managed things. It’s just a very bad situation that could have happened anywhere else.”

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

When asked about the modelling for when COVID-19 cases might peak in Victoria, Dr Heslop said that Victoria has given us recent examples, as well as the Ruby Princess issue in NSW, which provide good examples, however, “the problem with Australia in terms of modelling is that we have such an agile and well-resourced public health system means we can’t really predict how this will unfold.”

“I have my fingers crossed that yes, it will worsen, but in the next two week we will start to see a flattening then a drop in Victoria because they are taking this very seriously.”