@milestimson
livin' la vida loca
Karan Dev
@Karan.Dev · 1:33
In conversation with NHS worker Miles Timson
It's late in the evening for me here in Mumbai, but good afternoon to you. And it would be great if you could start off by telling us about your experience, what it's been like working in the NHS and under such trying circumstances over the last year and what are the challenges, challenges facing British society at the moment
Miles Timson
@milestimson · 1:54
I don't know if Karan will like this, but I just like to correct them quickly and let him know that I wasn't a volunteer and that I was employed by the NHS or outsourced by the NHS to be completely correct. So my role basically entailed. Welcome to the test and trace system. It's called track and trace in other sort of countries. I think America used it, but I don't think it worked out too well over there
Miles Timson
@milestimson · 0:59
But yeah, it's basically sort of become drastically underfunded at the moment, and it's put on strain. I know the nurses are on minimum wage to around minimum wage or that sort of bracket of income. And also a big sort of selling point of Brexit was that the 350,000,000 pound per we were giving to the EU was to go back on the NHS, which was being drastically underfunded, but all of that money somehow gone missing
Miles Timson
@milestimson · 1:37
Karen, I'll show you be asking me a bit more about these questions as I'm glossing over them a bit. But in regards to sort of how society is dealing with it in the UK, it's been quite bizarre for me. I don't know why. I don't think you guys know this, but Karen and me actually met in Cambodia
Miles Timson
@milestimson · 1:19
I feel like to add as well. It was even more bizarre because when I was sort of over in Indonesia and those sort of southeastern countries, Southeast Asian countries, obviously, UK with 19 was a thing and it was talked about. But the press here made it quite a big moral panic, and everybody was very worried about it
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:37
How are you guys framing it to help people over their philosophical bump that you just don't need it if other people get it. I'm just curious about that because social norms are so strange. Now there's not one way to do stuff. And I know in England, there's a lot of respect or, you know, the cultural norms. How is getting a vaccination fitting into cultural norms
Miles Timson
@milestimson · 3:14
Hi, Deborah, thanks for joining the conversation. Really appreciate it. And so I'll just jump in and answer it. Really. So regardless of the vaccination, I think we probably have relatively similar sort of are stuck in the same issues here, basically, in regards to certain people just outright refusing it. Lots of people, I don't know if they've become cultivated on this by social media and so forth
Miles Timson
@milestimson · 0:33
And Deborah, I know I sort of began to ramble a bit there. I knew this, but I would definitely say the NHS is really sort of pushing people to take the vaccine along with the government and sort of any sort of celebrity or people who have any sort of sway or influence and people are pushing people to take the vaccine as well. But yeah, it's a lot more formalized here. And I do suppose that the vast majority of people would like the vaccine a very pro vaccine
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:27
But I understand that if a school might not want people in who haven't been vaccinated or a bar for that matter, so are we creating two classes of people? And how is that going to play out? Yeah, it's just really like I said in our private conversation, there's also this disparity between what people perceive as healthy lifestyles. And how does that lean into the next phase of getting sick easier because you don't have a lifestyle that creates a strong immune system
Miles Timson
@milestimson · 2:39
So what I mean here is, for example, when we first started hearing about the outbreak in China in Wuhan, I don't know about you guys, but I was seeing footage online of loads of very distressing sort of scenes and quite frankly, very dangerous