 Good morning and welcome to the 17th meeting of the Covid-19 recovery committee in 2022. This morning we will continue our inquiry into Covid-19 communication on public health information and I'd like to welcome to the meeting Adam Stature, the head of policy and communications for Age Scotland. Unfortunately, Danny Boyle has had to hand in his apologies from B-miss this morning. I welcome Gillian McElroy, policy and information officer from Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, Dr Sally Witcher, OBE chair on the Scottish Commission on Social Security and Professor Jill Pell, director of the Institute of Health and Well-being from the University of Glasgow. Welcome everybody and thank you for giving us your time this morning and also for all your written submissions. Motor Fraser is running slightly late but he should be with us within 10 minutes so just to let the witnesses know that. Our inquiry has three aims and this session is focused on the second aim which is to consider whether public health information about Covid-19 is accessible to and meets the needs of specific audiences going forward including people in the shielding category and communities where there has been below average take-up on the vaccination. This session will be the final stakeholder evidence session before we hear from the Minister on Public Health and Women's Health and Sport next week on the 30th of June. We estimate this session will run up to 11 o'clock and each member will have approximately 14 minutes each to speak to the panel and to ask questions and if you'd like to respond to any issue being discussed please press R in the chat box and we will try and bring you in. I'm keen to ensure that everybody gets an opportunity to speak but I apologise in advance if time runs on too much. I may have to interrupt members and witnesses in the interest of brevity. I'm just to clarify Dr Sally which is attending in a personal capacity this morning as well. Can I invite witnesses to briefly introduce themselves and if I could start with Adam Police. Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation here so I'm Adam Sturhur. I'm the head of policy and communications at Age Scotland. We're the national charity for older people, people of the age of 50. At the very start of the pandemic our national helpline became a very central national resource for older people to understand what the messaging was around Covid-19 and we were funded by the Scottish Government to scale that up. We've had tens of thousands of calls from older people about Covid-19 and related measures since then and lots of hopefully helpful information for this committee. Adam, can I bring in Gillian McElroy please? Good morning and thank you for the invitation to give evidence to the committee this morning. I'm Gillian McElroy and I'm the policy and information officer at the health and social care alliance. The alliance is the national third sector intermediary for a range of health and social care organisations and we have a growing membership of over 3,000 national and local third sector organisations. We've heard from our members throughout the pandemic that communication and public health messaging has been limited and interrupted at all levels and we look forward to exploring that further throughout this session. Thank you very much Gillian. Can I bring in Dr Sally Witcher please? Thank you very much and good morning, convener. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. I first need to get absolutely clear. I am not here in the capacity of chair of the Scottish Commission on Social Security. I resigned from that role a few weeks ago precisely because I was concerned that there may be some confusion about what I say in a personal capacity on this matter and the important role of that committee of commission. I'm here in a personal capacity as somebody with a 30-plus year track record of working in the equality, inclusion and human rights fields in senior roles recently as a former director of the chief executive inclusion Scotland, previously of the child poverty action group in academia and also as a senior civil servant and holder of various public appointments. I'm also somebody who myself was on the highest risk list until it was discontinued recently. I am a time risk myself. I'm not eligible for vaccine boosters or antivirals. My last booster was eight months ago and I have been basically in my house for two and a half years without any prospect of leaving in the foreseeable future. I have a lot to say about as do an awful lot of other people out there because I have been active on Twitter and have a lot of things to say. On behalf of people who feel they're not being heard, the frustration of knowing that the tools exist and it isn't actually necessary for it to be this way that it is possible to build a safe, inclusive, new normal and frustration. I have to say that anger at those aren't being used. Thank you very much. Dr Witcher and Apologies, that was my fault from the briefing that I had, but we do know that you're here on your personal capacity. Good morning. I'm a Professor of Public Health. I was a member of the Scottish Government advisory committee on Covid until it was disbanded, but my reason for being here today is because I led a study on the shielding strategy and specifically whether it was effective in terms of protecting individuals but also whether it had a role to play in terms of protecting health service demand. That's great. Thank you very much. I'll now turn to questions. If I may start to ask the first question. I'll start with some of the concerns that were raised in the written submissions by Dr Sally Witcher and the Alliance Scotland in relation to clinical vulnerable. I personally think that it's really concerning that, after what we've all faced over the past two years, that the clinically vulnerable groups who have very valid fears of Covid infection are now feeling that they could be faced with hostility from the general public in some places. I found that really alarming to read the written report. First, I'd like to ask Dr Sally Witcher what in your view would an inclusive new normal look like? Thank you very much. I'm clearly the whole debate around vaccination and masking has become pretty toxic and what I tried to do because I could see possibilities of other things that could be done was to think about what could be done that doesn't actually require action from the general public. There are a number of things that could be done that would have a real—there's no magic bullet here—vaccine is a game changer, it's not a game winner for all time, so we need to think more broadly than that and we need to understand that what makes people vulnerable is not just a clinical risk, it's to do with the exposure as well and there's much that you can do around that. The kinds of things that need to be seriously looked at and they are up to a point but not seriously in my view are clean air strategy. We take clean water for granted. One of the things that did come out of Covid that was positive and could be a Build Back Better initiative is around the technology around air filtration that removes virus from the air. There's also technology around sterilisation, which is all very new and is emerging. This is another area of scientific inquiry that I think is very important to give sufficient weight to. That's a clear part of it. When it comes to the clinical side, it is about making good use of the tools that we have available. One of the areas that a lot of us are very confused about is that we've been told that the reason for discontinuing the highest risk list is because we now have vaccination and antiviral treatments, which we do and they're good, but so why are people with high underlying clinical risks not eligible? We know vaccination's way. We're not told anything about that. We know they don't always protect fully. There's things around even existing clinical policy, which is very mysterious and raises a lot of questions. We love to know who's going to get the autumn booster. This feels really desperate. We've got nothing to say about our underlying clinical risk as in any way change. That's part of it, but it's also things like another real area for improvement has been around masks. We now understand about different kinds of masks. They do need to be fitted properly, FFP3s and so on. Do something about that. Make them available. They're actually quite expensive, things like that. If you're going to have a Covid safety signage scheme where premises can put things in their windows, we'll make that legally enforceable in the way they have in Belgium, so part of environmental health standards. There's a lot you could be doing around the law. People are increasingly getting tuned in to the fact that they've already got lots of rights, actually, as to unpaid carers under the Equality Act, which are things like reasonable adjustments, but the messaging that we got and still are getting from the CMO around why not have a little chat with your employer if you're a bit worried about going back to work. Actually, the message is you've got rights. You have got rights, and if it's not respected, that is disability discrimination under the law, but there's also laws around hate crime, clean air. There is stuff on building regulations. It's wide-ranging, and nothing is being done to promote that. Sometimes you're going to need to update it. We need to rethink these things because what equality meant, the meaning of equality—we've got new equality groups now, new drivers—we need to have a completely different mindset now, factured into the review of the national performance outcomes. That's my case, and we need to think much more widely. If we used all those tools as we could and as we should, then we could build a safe, inclusive, new normal. It isn't about some people having freedom at other people's expense or some people being restricted and other people can have freedom. It's about everybody being able to have maximum freedom and avoid the risk to everybody of long Covid, because that has simply not been communicated. It isn't just about our risk as people who have clinical risks, it's about everybody's risk. The numbers there are rocketing, and this is a real crisis. It's going to have a big impact on the economy, on education, as well as on people's lives and children's life chances. I totally agree. As you said from the last two odd years, there's been no guidebook on anywhere across the world on how we deal with this pandemic or how, as we emerge into the new normal as such. It was interesting that you mentioned Belgium there, because I think that one of the things that we can look at as we can learn a lot from how other countries across the world are dealing and emerging from Covid as well. As I said, there's no guidebook, so I think that there's lots of lessons to be learned. Dr Witcher, is there any other countries that you feel are probably a bit more progressive or that we could be learning from? I know that you mentioned Belgium, but are they getting it right as they emerge from Covid? I think that you're absolutely right to say that people are dealing with this in very different ways. The thing is that it's just emerging the whole time. The pandemic isn't over. It's still evolving. We're in a different stage now, but we're not in recovery. We need to look widely and learn where we can. I am aware that I'm not going to give you chapter and verse now, because I don't have the research to hand. I want what I say to be evidence-based, but I would be very happy to come back to you with my thoughts and research on that. I think that there's learning. Even just what you pick up in mainstream media, you can see that other countries have different challenges and different cultural attitudes, different kinds of leadership and different starting points and understandings about viruses of those kinds. We may need to be a little cautious when drawing direct comparisons, but I think that there's a enormous amount of learning out there that could be incredibly helpful. I think that we all want to build back better, including the Scottish Government, absolutely. It's just about how we can constructively work together to make that happen within the very real constraints that I know governments experience of multiple kinds. That's really interesting. I might open it up to the other witnesses if I can and just ask their views on how the needs of the high-risk individuals can be better communicated to the general public as we go on to the next stage of Covid. I don't know if anyone just wants to raise their hands, because I can see you on the screen and we can bring you in. Adam? Thank you. I think that there is a very interesting piece in all of this of the last two and a half years. We could have been in a position where we were looking to segment the public into who needs extra help and who then doesn't at a certain point, and that's quite a dangerous place. What I don't mean is that people shouldn't be getting all the support that they need. Once people feel that they've got the freedom that they feel that someone else is stopping them getting their maximum freedom, as Dr Witcher has suggested, I think that part of this is looking at how communication talks about our whole country, about what everybody needs, and not finding a position where we have the highest clinical risk, those who are unpaid carers, feeling that they're in the wind, feeling that they are left behind as the world is moving on and not getting the maximum support. In a sense, you get the negative communication from people who are really needing support and feel that they need support. Sometimes the clinical advice is that, broadly speaking, individuals will have a different view on that because they'll know their health and their circumstances better than ever. I know lots of older people who are still shielding despite not being necessarily clinically risked because they're terrified of getting Covid. They want to make sure that they are as healthy as possible and they don't want to pass on to anyone else in their life who might be at a high clinical risk. The communication part is trying to avoid a situation in which those who do need support are then negatively communicating about their experiences and then it becomes a haves and haves not part. I think that this is a really important part for the health service and for the Scottish Government to address, is that making sure that folks are getting everything that they possibly need so that we don't have that disparity of experiences. Thank you. I think that, to begin with, we would agree with many of the points that Dr Richard and Adam have made. I think that just to build on that and add some broader considerations, the Alliance, we pay strongly for an equality and human rights-based approach so that it includes empowering people to know that they have rights to claim them and to know that they have accessible routes to remedy and redress if those rights are not respected, protected and fulfilled. I think that part of the broader communication needs to really highlight that. In terms of inequality and human rights-based approach, public bodies need to be carrying out human rights and equality impact assessments at the earliest opportunity and in consultation with people's lived experience to really understand those intersectional impacts of Covid and the pandemic. The potential impacts of decision making on people's everyday lives. As you touched on, there is a need for on-going research and investment to fully understand the impacts of Covid. I think that the other thing that I would add is that something that we have heard from members is that there is a lack of understanding of the risks of Covid infection and the scale and severity of long Covid. Efforts are really needed to improve that understanding and knowledge of long Covid in the community. We recently commissioned research at the Alliance on Accessing Social Support for Long Covid. One of the key themes from that research was issues with public awareness around long Covid and the effect that it can have on people. There is something in there about a national long Covid communications campaign to educate the public around that and the effect that it can have on people in considering that as part of the inclusive new normal as we move forward. I think that just to touch on your question about how the needs of higher risk individuals can be better communicated to the general public, there is something in there about moving away from the finite positions that our members have perceived about Covid being before and after restrictions and before and after lockdown. It is something that our members have felt within the public messaging and I think that that needs to change at all levels in national and local public health messaging and in the media to really increase that public awareness of the risks of Covid and the impact that it can have on people and on faith-gators. Thank you, Gillian. That's really helpful. I'm going to move on to Amara Fraser, who has joined us this morning. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you very much. Apologies to you and colleagues and the witnesses for my late arrival, which is because my usual method of transport coming by train was not available and I was battling with Highland show traffic to get in. But good morning to you all. I'd like to ask about the issue of targeting of communications, because one thing that the committee has heard from previous witnesses is that there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to public health messaging that meets the needs of all and we segment the population. There are various minority groups that includes older people, those in ethnic minorities, those in higher risk groups for whom the messaging might need to be different for that of the general population. I might start with Adam on this, but do you think that Covid public health messaging was adequately targeted to different groups? If not, what more needs to be done in the future to try and fix this? It's a good question. I would say at the beginning of the pandemic, or the height of the severity of the virus, that the broad national to all messaging—this really simple stuff was good—was undertaken on channels that were accessible to the vast majority of people. Television broadcasting was a particularly good one, and there were advertising campaigns because the messaging was simple. I think that this is a really important part. The messaging at that time was very simple. What was very interesting at the time in terms of older people in general and its experience for our national helpline was that, while there was a very simple messaging coming from First Minister, chief medical officer, clinical directors and others, our national helpline would immediately get phone calls asking for further clarity on what that meant in their particular circumstances. I do X or Y, so can I do this? I care for whoever, so can I do this? I'm told to stay at home, but my mother lives a couple of local authorities away, so can I still go there? At this point, there are lots of realising that people's lives are very complex, and that simple messaging, while it's important, will raise other things. On the communication of that and the channels at the beginning, it was pretty good. It was also at the same time that there was no other news, was there? The only game in town was Covid news, what our national protections were, so that made life very straightforward. As soon as things started to change and language changed, we encountered more difficulties from folks. Let's look at older people from ethnic minorities, where English isn't their first language, who are then at home or without the support networks that they might have had, whether it's through community clubs and groups or through their own family to help them to better understand what that was—the translation, in a sense, and the best way they possibly can from English into it. That might not have been as available to them as it could have been. I think that this is an on-going challenge that we have with making sure that everybody understands what the messaging is. I will go back one step and I won't drag dwell on this too long, but as soon as the messaging about Covid became a bit more complex, the scale of inquiries to our national helpline increased massively. It became much harder to work out what that meant in that circumstance. Even looking at half a million over-60s in Scotland, we estimate that they don't use the internet. There are a lot of people who are online who don't use it particularly well, in a sense that they aren't the most competent at everything, so burying things away on websites is just because you can say that you can go to NHS and form or whatever. That might be a harder task for many than you might think if you're very digitally native. As soon as we start burying information online on websites, you could do any number of investigations into the websites of GP surgeries and a variety of different quality of the information that is on there or home pages that are very cluttered, so people are looking for information and finding bits all over the place. When the message is simple, it was effective. As soon as we started to have a bit more complex messaging, people found it a lot harder to understand what that was. As soon as we stopped investing massively in broadcasts and in non-digital means, that had become harder for folks to really understand and know where to go to to get the right advice and the right information. Thank you very much for that answer. I'm sure that all the MSPs here would be very familiar with the situation where we were being bombarded with queries from constituents asking in the circumstances, can I do x, y, z? We weren't equipped to answer those questions either. For us, trying to get answers was actually a very difficult and time-consuming process. I think that Jill Pell wants to come in and then Sally Witcher. On the specific questions that are being targeted, at the beginning of the pandemic, we had 2 per cent of the population that were categorised as clinically extremely vulnerable and told to shield, but there was another 27 per cent of the population that were in this moderate-risk group who were just advised to be more diligent in following general guidance. What we found when we looked at the data was that, yes, the shielded group were at much higher risk in spite of shielding. There were still 18 times more likely to be hospitalised for Covid, 49 times more likely to die from it, but the moderate-risk group were also at much higher risk than the lower-risk category. There were still seven times more likely to end up in hospital Covid, 26 times more likely to die from it, and they weren't getting the same targeted message as the shielded group. Because there was so much larger in number, they were contributing to far more of the hospitalisations and deaths in the general population. I think that that is a group that we need to consider. That group is predominantly people who just happen to be 70 plus years in age and do not have the same levels of morbidity that are required to get into the shielding group. Sally Witcher. The first thing to say is that it is important to have clearly segmented communication and understand what questions people have and how to answer them in ways that will be accessible to them. It is also important to think about the fact that most people will access the general public messaging and how that lands. One of the challenges around that is that messages that will land with one bunch of people in one way will land with another bunch in a very different way. If somebody says—as the First Minister did—when the mask mandate was removed, I am confident that most people will continue to wear masks and remind them to protect the vulnerable. What gets hurt is that we are not confident. We are not as people on the sharp end, and it only takes one. Our freedom is contingent on other people having the good will to protect us, which is not about rights, not about equal citizenship. There are some things here about the pattern of that. People mostly will go with what the general stuff is. The second thing is that, when it comes to targeted, you did a rather good job in some ways in establishing—the Government did—a channel with people with high underlying clinical risk in the form of their chief medical officer's letter, which they have now discontinued. That was quite an effective way, but the key thing is that, if audiences are very diverse, you must have multiple communication channels, and all of them need to be accessible. That was a good one, because it is one that a lot of people could access—not everybody, but some—a large proportion of that target audience. It did not tell us things that we wanted to know. It is one thing to get your targeted communication channel right, but if you have not got the information, you are not using it to communicate what people want to know. This is the point. Telling us about where to go if we need a little bit of support to build our confidence to adjust to going back to normal was not the point. The point was that we were very anxious because we had not been given the information that enabled us to feel safe. What there was, the evidence that was about the reason for discontinuing the high risk list, was inaccessible. Out of date, as it said, it was quite clear from what it said itself, it was not robust and only dealt with the question of vaccine protection, nothing on what you mean by vaccine protection, nothing on a whole manner of other things that people wanted to know. People want to know about Evershell, people want to know about autumn boosters. There is a number of things here. One is to get your general comms right and make sure that it lands correctly with everybody. One is if you establish good channels and then make use of them in ways that are going to be effective and answer people's questions. Probably the biggest point that I would want to make is that if you really want to reach segmented specific groups in ways that are going to be effective, they are going to tell them what they need to know, then why not go and ask them, involve them in the development of communication strategies? They will tell you how that will land and whether it answers their questions. This is something that Governments have done a lot around setting up little groups. People have policy panels such as Inclusion Scotland on social care support, the core group of the charter, the social security charter. There are models out there. You could be doing this, the Government could be doing this. I do not know why it is not. The thing about communications is that it is two-way. It is not just that we tell you what we know, what we do not know, what you should do. What is it that you need to know? What are your questions? What are your concerns? Then we will tell you what we know and what our advice would be. If you only do the top-down adult-to-child type model, Government as a parent, it is not going to work. People are not children, they are adults and whatever their views about this situation, it does not mean that people are not stupid, they can spot mixed messages on mile-off and that is what you need to be ensuring. I have been told that you have to keep one metre distance now in this setting but it is two metres over here and it does not matter at all. You can only be three people over here in this situation but it is perfectly fine for great loads of people in that one. People can work that out and that is not just about targeting, it is about making it consistent and clear. You have got very diverse people here in very diverse situations, even within one segmented audience. You have got to get it consistent, you have got to get it landing right. Thank you very much, we hear you loud and clear. Gillian McElroy wants to come in. Thank you. I was just to add a few points from the perspective of the Alliance, which I think will echo and chime with many of the points that I have gone before. Alliance members have shared that public health messaging has been variable both at national and local levels throughout the pandemic. While some people have found the Government guidelines useful and there have been those pockets of good practice, many others have found the changing guidelines and availability in services really quite difficult to follow, which can lead to confusion and a lack of clarity around the guidance. Of course, that has a direct impact on people's health and wellbeing but also their ability to access health and social care services. I think that a key issue that has already been touched on is that lack of person-centred information. People have reported receiving blanket information provision, which can be too general and too ambiguous and does not consider the needs of different and specific population groups. The issue of accessible information is really key. We know that there has been a lack of Covid information provision in a range of accessible and multiple formats, including alternative languages or community languages such as Braille, Easy Wheat and large print. It really needs to have that universal and inclusive approach to ensure that people are fully informed on an equitable basis. We have also heard about specific issues for autistic people in terms of the ambiguous information of written communication, which can be too ambiguous and lacking clarity on key information. That tailored and person-centred approach is really needed both to increase understanding of the restrictions and what was going on during Covid, but also in terms of accessing health and social care services and working through health and social care interactions. The key takeaways and learnings that we would take is the need for making information publicly available in multiple formats, and also having those multiple formats published on a timely basis and where possible having them made available at the same time as mainstream communication. As Dr Witcher had mentioned, involving relevant experts, including people with lived experience at the earliest opportunity. Thank you all for that answer. I have just got one follow-up briefly and maybe go back to Adam Stracura on this. One of the messages that the committee has had is that social media could be used more effectively in terms of targeting particular audiences, but Adam, you said that half a million over 60s do not have access to the internet. Interesting to get your perspective on how effective social media would be in reaching groups, particularly older people. We can hear you at the moment. I'll just take myself off mute. Again, another good question. Social media has got a massively important part to play in a lot of this, but not just older people who aren't online, a lot of people who aren't comfortable being online, a lot of people who aren't online every minute of the day. Mr Fraser might be, if we've got a mobile phone in our pocket or busy on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. It has a really good place to play, but it shouldn't be the primary route for that. Dr Witcher has led us for two. In every single group, there are also segments within those groups, which is quite hard. All that targeting is tricky. Not everybody is on a list somewhere. Social media is going to be important. With a lot of the Covid messaging from the Scottish Government, from NHS and others, the use of social media was pretty good. When people were getting it, there were simple messages, accessible videos and things that were short enough to take you and direct you to a lot of the right places. There were a lot of good things that happened there, but an over-alliance on a digital first or a digital primacy route is not just a national crisis, but including all of our residents and citizens in the right information isn't necessarily right. A lot of people said that they are on that while they might be digitally connected, they aren't that confident in it or don't trust it that much, or are worried about the wrong use in social media, the fake news, the disinformation part or people who can be taken in by the fuel of their credible sources, but they really aren't, whether it was about the effectiveness of vaccines or other things. As a national charity, we were just trying to articulate and re-advertise what the NHS and the Scottish Government were saying on all of those things, in terms of what we thought was the most responsible thing to do. Broadcast was so important, newspapers were so important, radio was so important. I think that having BSL interpreters on TV with the First Minister and anyone else doing it was a great thing to the right thing, but all of those things are going to be expensive with public health messaging. Social media has seen us as cheap and easy in the quickest way. Sure, it might be, but getting it right is going to be very intensive and quite expensive, but that's probably necessary. Can I ask Mabe in terms of where we are today, right now? I certainly know more people this week than I have known at any point throughout the pandemic, so we seem to have Covid that is, the numbers are increasing. I saw calls this morning for all over 50s to be vaccinated, so in terms of where we are at today, do you think that there is a greater understanding of Covid and the measures that are in place, or do you think that, perhaps, people have reached a point where it's a bit like having the flu, and despite the fact that there's these other variants and we're starting to see across the world other variants spread, are you relaxed with where we're at, or do you think that we actually need to have some kind of review and look at what messaging needs to go out there to support people in the here and now, and are you hearing concerns come across from your organisations about the current up-to-date position? Perhaps I could start with Adam. Well, look, thanks for that question. I've been brought in first. I was hoping to write in the coattails of others on my answer, but you mentioned that there are no real restrictions, are there, for most people? The general view is that it's normality in terms of what we need to do or what we're mandated to do or what we're being asked to protect ourselves and others is largely there. The masks are the last element of that and, although there is understanding that masks should be used, very few people actually do, even on public transport or other places. People of all ages actually. There isn't a national vaccination programme still in effect. The latest dose will be available to some people, but not everybody, so the vast majority of folks will not think that it's necessary or for them, therefore things have kind of moved on. Folks are going on holiday abroad again. I'm aware of more people now than ever have who have had Covid recently or have it now. The severity of that might have been a lot less than it had been two years ago. We're hearing less of people being in hospital for it, so maybe folks are feeling that we're in a better place, but then there comes new stories about new variants. We hear very little now from older people through our helpline and others about Covid-related things. The challenges are about how you get life restarted, but also the big fears about Covid as a virus and the challenges that they're facing in terms of their own life, the loneliness and isolation, the mental health challenges, the physical health challenges, the lack of access to medical and health services and other social settings. For a lot of people, life has moved on to trying to get things back to their own normal, which is a lot harder than it will be, but with new variants happening, there is some anxiety about what happens next. How quickly can we turn things back on if we need to? Looking ahead to the winter time or autumn winter and beyond, what might happen there will start to become more of a concern for people over time as new variants start to develop. We don't know a lot about the future, but we, as a nation, are ready to enable to protect people, as we have in the past, as quickly and effectively as we have now, that all the restrictions have been dropped. Gillian MackleRoy Thank you. Reflecting on your question, there is a need for a better understanding of the continued risks of Covid to everyone. I touched on it earlier, but I think that, certainly among our members, there is this perception that the public messaging is very binary and it's this before and after restrictions. That needs to change to increase public awareness. For many people, it's the view that Covid has finished over this over, but we know that that's not the case for huge numbers of people for everyone. We really need to think about that in our public messaging and reflect it. There's also some confusing messaging. We've got the Scottish Government Covid Sense campaign, but I'm not sure how clear that is to people when restrictions have been effectively finished, but people are still being told to consider Covid Sense. I'm not sure how clear that is to the general public, what that means for themselves and what that means for people who are at high clinical risk and for unpaid carers. I think that, in terms of your question, there's still that need for awareness of the real risks of Covid as we continue today. Thank you. I think that what's happening now is that we've hit crunch time, where the narrative that we're in recovery is back to normal hits head on the reality that it isn't. It's a reality that is present in a lot of people's lives, as you rightly say. The huge numbers of people are now getting infected, including people who are re-infected and people who have not been infected before. What's happened here is that we're seeing a sort of screeching of breaks as we need to do a U-turn. From that messaging and from that presentation of a reality that it's fine, we can move forward now back to the old normal, and it's almost like going back into an acknowledgement that we now need to do. People are kind of understanding and very confused about this. The messaging has mixed. It was only over a few days that I was looking at it. On the one hand, we've got a lot of experts arguing that, in fact, the entire population should be offered a booster, that long Covid is rising, that this is a new variant, that it's highly transmissible, it looks like it may settle in the lungs, which could be more serious. Heard immunity is probably a myth, and so a lot of warnings, but then we have people going, oh, it's mild, it's mild, it's not, you know, compared to all the others, it's not a problem, that there's very few people really now at clinical risk because of the vaccine, which, by the way, is waning, and we don't really know much about that, but hey, move on. Don't panic, no need for restrictions. First off, can I say, issue a general plea? Can we stop calling them restrictions, please? These are not restrictions, they're protections. They protect people's freedom, they don't restrict it, and that goes not just for people at high clinical risk, it goes for the population in general. I think that's where we are now, and what I would ask is for the Scottish Government to exercise some Covid sense here, please, and respond, follow the science about where we are, and exercise some leadership here around not causing us to spin over the edge of a cliff because we haven't negotiated that change of tack with the skill that we need to, because the consequences of that not happen, you know, basically if we don't get the messaging right now, the Scottish Government doesn't get the policy right, then we are looking at a very serious situation, and if you think people are disengaging and distrustful, perhaps it's because they're trying to make sense of those extremely mixed messages, so I do think that there's a really important role here for the Scottish Government. I still believe that the Scottish Government wants to do the right thing, wants to build back better, and I just, you know, previous person who asked a question, Moder Fraser, said that I was being heard loud and clear. Well, I don't think that a lot of people feel that they are being heard loud and clear, and it would be brilliant if that could now happen, because there's a lot of very worried people out there. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you, and Professor Pehl. So, there are effective before prongs to what we can do, and we've removed three of them. So, as Adam already mentioned, we've taken away the non-pharmaceutical interventions, the requirement for social distancing, the mandatory need for facial coverings, etc. We've also removed access to mass testing, which we need to acknowledge, and we've also removed the idea of having a shielding list, a supported shielding list, so we're left solely with vaccination, really. Vaccination, it does reduce transmission, it does reduce severity, but nonetheless cases are going up, as you say, and in some people, those cases will result in adverse outcomes, you know, hospitalisation, death, long coven, and so on, and there's always a threat of new variants, so I think that we do need to remain diligent and particularly think about whether we need to reconsider access to testing if the rise in cases justifies it, because it's very difficult for people at the moment, even if they want to be good citizens, to identify they have infection and take action and so on, so I think that we do need to watch the situation closely and be willing to respond to it. Okay, thank you. And in terms of the question around vaccination, as I say, I've saw some public health experts call for all over ffifties to get the booster coming into this year's winter. Is your view, Professor Pell, that there is enough information available to us? Have the public got the confidence? Vaccine take-up was good, despite other specific areas, but by and large, it was really good, but I worry for the future if we have a vaccine or the booster for all over ffifties that the uptake won't be as high. What's your views on that? Well, first, as I say, we're reliant on vaccination. We've removed the other options, so, therefore, we have to make sure that it's delivered comprehensively and regularly with boosters, so absolutely. Uptake, as you say, has been good, but I think that there's always been good confidence in the Scottish population compared to south of the border in the US. You've maintained that really well in the Scottish Government. If people understand and they do so for it, and if you continue to communicate that by getting vaccinated they could potentially avoid those other lockdowns, restrictions and so on. I think that that would motivate them to continue to have high uptake with vaccination rates. Thanks very much, convener. We've talked quite a lot about communication already, and I wanted to continue that into the area of communication of uncertainty. We've had some advice from some of the scientific community and so on that we should be very open about uncertainty, and that increases transparency and that increases trust. But given that we've already accepted that getting simple messages across to all the different languages and all the different groups and societies is quite difficult, I just wonder if it's realistic when there is uncertainty, and yet there obviously is. One example was pregnant women at the beginning of the vaccination programme, where I think they had not been tested on pregnant women and therefore there couldn't be a decision made, so it was publicly said that that would have to wait, but the kind of message a lot of people took up was vaccines are dangerous for pregnant women. I just wonder if any of you could comment on this idea of how do we deal with uncertainty and maybe Professor Pell could start on that one. So the public trust in Scotland has been much, much higher through the whole pandemic than it has in some other countries, and part of that has been because communication coming from the Scottish Government has been honest. So I think it's been clearly explained to them what we know and what we don't know and what we're doing and why we're doing it, and I think it's when politicians and policymakers try to pretend they know more than they do that people see completely through that and stop trusting you. So I think you should be open and honest with people, I mean not to the extent to scare them on green, but I think you gain much more trust and respect and more importantly much more compliance. People are much more likely to do what you're asking them to do if they think you're being honest with them in the communication and justifying why you're asking them to take certain actions and the evidence bears that out. You don't think it increases confusion? No. Communication comes around how you communicate. You can communicate uncertainty in a way that's clear. I mean you can communicate uncertainty in a way that's unclear. I mean the ability to communicate clearly has to be separated from whether you're being open and honest or not. Okay that's a good answer. I think I might quote you on that. Could I come to Gillian McElroy because I think the Alliance talked about we need more communication around long Covid and I just wonder if we're in the same kind of place as we were with vaccination for pregnant women in that there's so much uncertainty around long Covid. Is this really the time to be doing a communication campaign? Yes, I think there's a growing evidence base around long Covid and I think the impact of long Covid is clear amongst those that have been impacted. If we can start communicating that just now when people have been really severely impacted for the past two years, there's no reason to sort of delay that but I think it goes back to points about that clear messaging is really important. Okay even if we don't know and we're honest with people, are you agreeing with the previous comment that if we are uncertain about certain things we should just be honest with people about that? I mean I think there's evidence out there about the scale and severity of long Covid and I think that that can be harnessed in communicating. I acknowledge that there are uncertainties but I think starting with what we do have that can be communicated to degrees of public understanding. Okay and maybe Dr Witcher? A lot of evidence these days around long Covid and I've certainly seen figures of that being with something like two million people in the UK. There are figures around increases and I would strongly advise that this is now a relevant indicator to include alongside hospitalisation and death rates because it is a growing problem and I think it's also something that employers and businesses are picking up on. There has been recent coverage of some confusion about whether people who live with long Covid were covered by the Equality Act and many of them will be, I suspect, depends on the definition and whether they meet it of a disabled person. So there is a lot to be done here but this is again the next phase of the pandemic I think as well. This is like a new feature arising and there really is. There are organisations out there like Long Covid Scotland, Long Covid Kids Scotland which have got a lot of data, a lot of information and a lot of lived experience to contribute as well. I think it's worth recognising that now. This is definitely happening. We do have information. Yes, this is an evolving picture, it's been like that throughout. I certainly agree with what Professor Powell said about communication. It's not yet clear but you need to communicate that and be wary of communicating certainty where you are not. We have some things that could be communicated around Long Covid now which are pretty clear. The scale of risk is pretty clear, particularly when things are out at the scale of reinfection and so on. This is an ongoing issue. It isn't to get it once it's over and done with. This is not hurting unity and each time you get it there's risks of long-term damage to brain, to heart, to all kinds of organs and they can be changing. Okay, that's helpful. I think that I've got a consistent message from all the witnesses so far, so that's good. I'll move on. If I can stick with you, Dr Witcher, you've emphasised the use of words and I fully accept that words are really, really important. I'm a little bit wary of your saying that we should only use the word protection, we shouldn't use the word restriction because it strikes me, it's both. If we just use protection, I just wonder if people would say, well, you're just putting a spin on it because the reality is my life is being restricted. I can't go and visit my friends in London or whatever it might be, so I think my suggestion to you would be surely we should use the words both protection and restriction to be honest with people, but I'm also interested, you seem to be critical in your evidence of the use of the word vulnerable and I just wondered if you could expand on that because vulnerable is a word we use, I have to say in Parliament, quite a lot, be it financially vulnerable or in health context or in a whole variety of contexts, so maybe just around this use of words. Yeah, I'll be delighted to thank you for the question. The thing, I think, is that there are some forms of protection which are restrictive, so lockdown, that's protection, but it is very restriction of freedom. The challenge that arises when you're talking about things in terms of restriction that actually don't really restrict freedom at all, but in both cases things that may in any way require action, they're restrictive and as much as they require action, but they don't necessarily limit freedom at all. The reason for limiting freedom, if that's what you have to do, is in order to protect, not because you thoroughly enjoy restricting people's freedom. There's something here about how communications are used in ways and what they communicate, so for us, and it's about where you're positioned as well, so for us, we would see what is portrayed as restrictions very often as being protections, plus for us but for other people as well, so this is what communication is about, it's about how things are understood. You could say that calling the restrictions is putting a spin on it too, to put a subject to your agenda. In terms of vulnerable, it isn't that the word is necessarily one that you can't use and a lot of people who are clinically at high risk use that word themselves, so it isn't that, it's about me, it's about understanding what creates vulnerability. What I'm arguing is that being at high clinical risk itself isn't what necessarily makes you vulnerable because if you're in an environment that is safe, where the virus isn't being let rip, where the infection spread is being managed and protections are in place, you're not vulnerable, so what actually makes a person vulnerable with high clinical risk is not the high clinical risk, it's the removal of protections which might mean that they're not safe or trying to install them in the first place with things like hyper air filtration and so on. Okay, that's helpful. I suspect we're more in agreement, no I think we're more in agreement than maybe I thought we were at the beginning so that's all very helpful, thanks. Could I just move on to one other subject? I picked up it was in the Alliance briefing submission that the idea of the third sector filling the gap, and I just wonder if that was a complaint, so maybe Gillian McElroy could come in and then maybe Adam Stakura after that. Is that not the place for the third sector? I mean the public sector is largely lumbering and bureaucratic and there are always going to be gaps and that is what I see the third sector doing very well, so maybe you could just tell me if you think that that wasn't right or what you were thinking on that. Yep, I think there's a point here to be made about at the outset of the pandemic, we heard from people whose social care packages for example were withdrawn or reduced with little or no notice and I think in instances like that the third sector really stepped in to help people and support people with issues such as those, but I think it's really about partnership working between public bodies of Scottish Government and third sector organisations and community groups to provide that support to people. I don't think the role of the third sector is to fill the gap as such but to be valued as equal delivery partners in that sort of care and support. Okay, thanks. Adam Stakura, can you comment on that bit? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Mr Mason. If you look back to the Covid response from the third sector, it was able, and it still is in a lot of it, able to adapt a lot quicker than the public sector to fill not just a gap but a new gap that we need to do certain things. Age Scotland had a national helpline to scale that up from 80 calls a day to take 1,000 calls a day because there was no other resource for older people at the time. It supported well and I'm thankful by the Scottish Government to do that. Those look at all the support for those who put on shielding lists that lots of this was uptaken by third sector organisations and were able to adapt that breakneck speed and deliver what was required for a long period of time. I think that that's why it's really important, because you're thinking about trust and looking at communication. It's about organisations that are also trusted, that have networks, that have audiences, that have clients, that they work with and work for on a regular basis. I think that it's been a benefit of our country to be able to have a third sector that has been able to support people incredibly well. It's precarious though. If you look at it, a lot of charities and third sector organisations had financially a very difficult time going into and through this pandemic, which we're still in, where there is a reliance on them to undertake extraordinary tasks that they're able to be resourced to do that quickly. I think that there's too much, but there's a lot of support. I think that there was given by, say, Scottish Government and other UK Government and other places for that. I think that that demonstrates just how important a third sector in Scotland is and why it needs to be supported, to be resilient, because that's what we require as part of this crisis. This will be the only crisis that we'll face, I hope it is, but I'm sure it won't be, that we have a big network that is able to step in, but it's not been able to help everybody, because we've got so many people in the country that are not on anyone's list. That's very helpful. That's great. Thank you very much, Brian Whittle. Would you like to come in, please? Thank you, Kivina. Good morning to the panel. I just want to wind back a little bit here. I think that looking at, again, a communication, especially early on, I think that the information that we had evolved and changed, and for me personally, obviously, I'm not in a category that was vulnerable, but I found it difficult to follow sometimes and not quite sure how it should be in public or not, and then eventually not in public. Did that have a disproportionate impact on those who were potentially in the most vulnerable categories? Of course, the impact of Covid on those who are clinically vulnerable is much greater, so that uncertainty of information potentially was much greater. Can I just maybe get a wee bit of background on that and start with Professor Pell, please? I suspect I'm not there to answer this. I think that Sally probably is better placed, but there are probably two issues. I think that the high-risk group will have to do with two separate sets of communications, the general advice that was going to everybody, but also the specific advice that was going to them. The volume of information that they were getting was greater, the complexity of the information that they were getting was greater, and then on top of that, there's our own individual circumstances. As we've heard, all information is by definition generic, and it's how does it relate to me personally, but I think that I'm probably better handing over to Sally to give the respondents a view of things. Dr Wedger. Yes, well, I suppose what I would say is that if you don't get the messaging right for people who are at highest clinical risk and also unpaid carers, the consequences for this group are more acute than probably any other, because if people don't have confidence, they won't go out, and they may be very right not to. If they do go out or follow advice that isn't clear or they don't understand it, the consequences are very, very serious. In a way, I've talked about us being, if you like, the canaries in the mind, because if this group is wrong, if it's not got right, it's us that are going to be the people that bear the first brunt of it, the immediate brunt. We are the people that will signal that this has not been got right, so it is so important to get this right. As I said, this is now becoming a wider issue because of the wider public risk and the importance of getting that right, too, around long Covid. If you don't get it right for people who have underlying exceptionally high clinical risk, or people with lesser risk, as Professor Pell talked about earlier, then people don't know what to do. They haven't got the information to gauge their own risk. It's all very well to say, well, it depends how much you want to do a thing, but if I don't know what the risk is, because I don't know what the data is not there, we can't gauge our own risk, we can't make a good risk assessment, and neither can GPs a lot at the time, either. That's the problem. It is of critical importance. Other people may be a bit unwell if they get it wrong, some people may get long Covid. It will be much more severe for the likes of us. I could follow on from that. What was right at the start of the pandemic evolved and it became wrong, as our knowledge improved. A simple thing, for example, initially wearing a mask was not proven to have any impact until it was proven to have an impact. How difficult is it for somebody like me who is not in that category? How difficult is it then for those who are clinically vulnerable to accept that kind of change? How can the Government change the way that they approach the lessons that we can learn from this to make the messaging clearer? Dr Fitch, I'm afraid that that sits with you. That question sits with you again, I'm afraid. Thank you. That's a really easy question, which I can answer in a few minutes, clearly, or not. The key thing is here, it's about getting the basic communications right, which is that this is an evolving situation. We're learning. It is about the communication of uncertainty, but clarity around that. People are not being given the message, it's over, and then going, oh no, maybe it isn't after all, or it is like this, this is our best understanding for now, it's different from, you know, nobody needs to wear a mask. There's a lot of that that's going on here. It's also, though, about, I think again it goes back to sort of talking to the people concerned to find out what their questions are and communicating with them the latest in ways that enable them and giving them the right information, because that, I think, is the other really big point I've tried to get across here. You know, if you can communicate the wrong information about the wrong initiatives that aren't really going to do the business, like the distance aware scheme, and that isn't going to help. You've got to be clear what it is people need to know, and if you're not clear what they need to know and you're not answering that, to start with, I think you're on to a bit of a loser there, frankly. Oh, indeed, maybe it isn't government that's on to a loser, it's the people at the sharp end that are on to a bit of a loser. I appreciate that, that's a bit of a quick answer. If you'd like me to come back to you, I'd be very happy to say a bit more on that in writing. I was really hoping you'd solve all your problems. That's what a couple of Ministers are. Can I bring Gillian McElroy in on this? It strikes me as that sort of evolving situation would create issues with the organisation that you look after. Thank you. I think it also goes back to the topic of trust that we've touched on previously in building that trust in public health messaging. The starting point is, as I've said, that having that good quality, accessible and inclusive communication as a starting point and having that at the outset is a key factor in communicating that public health messaging. I'd also highlight the role of the third sector in communicating those messages and helping to build that trust with people that they support. Third sector and community groups have a key role to play in providing that trusted information and communication. We saw that through work to increase vaccine uptake in marginalised communities. Similarly, just from an alliance perspective, we have community links workers and GP practices. We know that they have been a real resource of support for people throughout the pandemic in providing that advice and support. They have a well-established and trusting relationship. It's about using a wider suite of resources in communicating that third public health messaging. If I can move on to... We're not hearing much now these days about Covid and the continuing potential risk to certain elements of our society. We're talking about new normals. We're talking about heading back to what we used to do pre-pandemic and not potentially recognising that there are those in society who still are at risk. I wonder, then, what does a new normal really look like for those who are still under risk? Will we require action from a societal reaction to that? Should we all be asked to adjust behaviour in a way to protect those who are most at risk? I'm going to go to Adam Stucka, because you've been sitting there quietly for a while. I'll go to you first, if I could. Thanks for the tough question, Mr Hull. The... Should we all... Going forward, let's look back in the early days of this and those who are most at risk of developing severe ill health or death, there's all this, was very much linked to age and also different underlying health conditions, which a lot of this would have come with age. I think that what we know from our national helpline and from hundreds of older people's groups across the country and from two and a half years of input from over 50s across Scotland to us is that they were happy to take up a vaccine and take up multiple vaccines and there was an anxiety for them. When there were problems in the administration of it, they were even more anxious, because that was their way of being able to live as they anticipated that they might have otherwise before the pandemic. What does the new normal look like? We've got folks who are still going to be shielding, or self-shielding, because they worry about the virus, but that's meant that they have not had access to medical treatment, so they might be in poorer health as a result of that. I know from a very personal circumstance of this happening where undiagnosed cancers led to the early death of somebody as a result, but people are really worried about Covid in its sense, but actually the knock on impact on their lives is going to be quite severe. I'm going to be living with this for a long time, so the new normal for them is going to be much the same, but it's very hard. Did we have the concepts of building back better? What does that mean? There's a lot more in the workplace that we're seeing in regard to flexible working or hybrid working situations that were sort of being bounced into in a good way and had to adjust to very quickly. I think that will be a big positive for people where they've got regain responsibilities on other things, their balance and their life might have been better than it otherwise would have. I'm going to talk about a broader piece of older people in general with the new normal. I think that depending on what happens in the future, we've had some pretty dire warnings from the World Health Organization in recent days about what the future might look like with Covid and how it's a worldwide issue, not just amongst the shores of the United Kingdom. We've got to deal with that, that something might come back in a more difficult period and that we're going to have to change how we live again, so this hasn't gone. I think that there is an anxiety from folks about this, but there's also almost, after two and a half years, a will from everybody to want to have as much of their freedoms as they had before to live their lives, because it's been really, really tough going. Having gone back to the point of communication—I'll stop in a second, but going back to communication has been having enough of that good information from the right sources to people to understand where we are as a country, demonstrating that when the facts, new facts arise and things change, that can be communicated, that we have new information and this is what we're going to go and do about it, and this is why we want you to understand this and this is why the thinking behind it, so it's not just, here's the clinical guidance says X, therefore you almost do it, and I don't think that that really cuts it all the time. We go back to the very beginning of the pandemic where we spoke about this in the past about the proliferation of do not-of-temposuscitation forms landing on people's in a sense on their mats, where they weren't told that this was going to happen, and all of a sudden they're being signed up to such a thing that they knew nothing about. There's a sort of lack of trust in there. The future is going to look very unpredictable, actually. I think that there's a lot of anxiety from older people about this. Sally, what's your latest date to come in? I think that the first thing to say is that whether we like it or not, this is a new normal, it isn't the old one, and that does mean change. Some of the change building on the learning that we've acquired during the pandemic is going to be helpful in creating more inclusion rather than the opposite. It's about how we build back better, although I've always preferred to phrase build forward better because I don't want to go back to the old normal. It wasn't that great for disabled people and others, and it's about using all the tools. In some ways, it may be about some changes of behaviour but not necessarily in bad ways. It's about using the positive learning about working from home remotely can actually achieve a better life work balance, and it doesn't mean that people just sit there doing nothing. It can be an incredibly effective way because it cuts down on travel time and it also has implications for climate change. There's a real issue now about how we get better hybrid events and so on, but that's emerging. Clean air-top technology isn't about people—we've got to get out of this binary way of thinking—that freedom equals restrictions. It's that kind of what either of the other or one or the other absolutely doesn't have to be that way. What building forwards better should mean is really focusing on what we can do, what everyone can do, in order to make this inclusive, safe for everyone. The point is that we could not do that. There's so much that could be done on that. If we're going to do it that way, we've got to position that as the vision. We've got to position that as the strategy, and it needs to be wide-ranging, and it's going to cross Government action. This is the other thing. This isn't just about health. It's about employment, education, hate crime and community safety. It's about building regulations, so we need a really comprehensive approach. It's a mixture of people accepting on occasions that, in order to protect their own freedom, let alone that of everybody else's, they're going to have to behave in certain ways. It's about maximising the really positive learning and continuing to develop it, about how we can make a fully inclusive, new normal that is safe and maximises the freedom of everybody. That's what it looks like for me. As already raised, I think that it's really important that we learn lessons, whether it's dealing with an uptick in Covid or another pandemic in the future. If we look back at how the pandemic started and how it was managed at the beginning, it was very different in the UK, Europe and the US compared to Asia, because Asia benefited, if you like, from SARS. They were able to have ramp-up testing capacity really early on, whereas we were totally reliant on non-pharmaceutical interventions and shielding, so I think there were lessons to learn there. There were some things that we got wrong, and that's inevitable, such as care homes, where we had staff moving between care homes freely, we had residents moving in and out of hospitals and so on. I think that we need to learn from that so that we don't repeat the same mistakes next time. It's not about a witch hunt, it's about just learning from this for the next time that it happens. I think that we need to accept that the new normal includes personal choices and respect those where they don't impact on other people. So, just as some people who were asked to shield chose personal freedom, they wanted to have a high-quality short life rather than a very restricted life and so on, and that's entirely their choice of not putting other people at risk. Similarly, some people, even though they're no longer on a shielding list, want to keep shielding, and that might be due to real high risk or perceived high risk and just concern about the pandemic. We have to respect that in terms of how we interact with people and behave towards them, and I think that we need to, as you've said already, incorporate vaccination as being just a normal part of living vaccination against Covid and boosters. Can I move on to Jim Fairlie, please? Thank you very much, convener, and thanks for the panel. I'd like to come to Dr Witcher, if that's okay, and I know that you've been tasked with a lot of the questions this morning, but your article on the Herald this morning, you talked about feeling vulnerable people treated like lepers—that's the headline that's in the paper—and I can absolutely get that feeling of, yeah, it's okay, everybody else is moving on, what about us? Is that your sense of where—I'm trying to not use the word vulnerable because of your previous comment, but the clinically at risk, is that your sense that you're getting left behind? Very much so, I'm afraid. Just to be clear, I didn't write that article. I would probably have written it a little bit differently, but the point was at the stands. I first made that point in connection to the distance-aware scheme, in fact, if you think about how lepers previously retreated—actually went back to the Bible for the first time ever, I consulted the Bible—and it talked about people having to declare themselves, identify themselves, isolate it on the outside. It was they that had to signal that they were infectious. Now it's the case with the distance-aware scheme that it's the people who don't want to get infected that have to distinguish themselves and have to isolate, because people who are infected have no restrictions on them going out. Frankly, some people are going to have to, because they don't have support. They have to work, but the reality then means that people become positioned as the people who other people need to kind of—it's us that are the ones that are the old ones out here—us that are the outcasts. I suppose that's kind of in some ways crystallised some of the feeling. That is in the context of the revised strategic framework, being very clear about how we must not develop this in such a way that it ends up with people high clinical risk and other disadvantaged groups being effectively cut off. It isn't just me. If you look at the Twitter thread that was part of the evidence and people's responses, I think that it will communicate very powerfully just how people feel about being abandoned, about just not being communicated with, being left behind, and it is about seeing everybody move on and go back. As I've said before, we'll worry about their safety too in the current context. The gap between us and where we are positioned and that of everybody else has become exacerbated, and there have been some examples. I've seen this from myself as well. As soon as you start pointing out that there's a problem here for people who are at high clinical risk and that this isn't working, you do risk attracting quite a lot of abuse and hostility, which again just underlines that you have no place in this society any more. This new normal doesn't accommodate you, you're not part of it, you are irritating outliers, you are just the people that we ought to remember. So much of messaging is, and by the way, we ought to remember to protect the vulnerable, we've asked people to remember to do this. We're equal citizens, we have equal rights, we're active, vulnerable always conveys passive, helpless, needy, but we're only like that because protections have been removed. We're not demanding lockdown, as the other thing, as soon as you start saying this, the response you get is that you're just telling us all to go back into lockdown. No, the point is we're telling people to do things so nobody has to. That very comfortable leads me on to where I want to take this. My general sense of the whole evidence session we've heard today is that right at the start, everybody got behind it, we all understood it, everybody's at risk, the message was simple. We started to change it because things were moving, things were evolving, the message became more complicated, it became more difficult to have that one-size-fits-all, so we've got to try and fragment it. You then come into the later stages where you've got competing voices, so hospitality industry, we want it opened up, we want flights opened up, we want life to go back to normal, we want to get our businesses moving, but in all of that, people then have this, well, we've got this fatigue now, so we want to get moved on, but you, the clinically vulnerable, sorry, I'm trying to get the right phrasing, the highest risk are stuck. Is there a need for the general public to get a better understanding that the public health message and improving the literacy of people's understanding of what it is that we're actually trying to achieve, so that none of us have that feeling that, yeah, okay, everybody else has moved on but we are still in the same place? I think the big challenge here is to communicate that actually we're all after the same thing here. None of us are arguing against everybody locking down, it's not about some people having freedom or not, and it's very much about making the business case. You talk about hospitality industries and travel sector and so on, hotel, whatever, being wanting to open up, well, of course they do, but the point now is that there are ways they could do that to communicate that they are following good practice, they can be installing air filtration, they can be, you know, and particularly if it was underlined with some legal backup and as I started talking about at the beginning of the session, you know, moving safety, signage scheme of some kind, which would communicate to people, this is what we've done on COVID safety, it's safe for you to come here, we're much safer for you to, because these measures are in place, you know, people just would generally go to a restaurant expecting certain standards to be in place, and that that would be inspected. I don't understand, you know, there's a business case of that, people aren't going to go into places which they don't feel safe, so it's safe to travel, if you don't feel safe you're not going to travel, and so there's a massive, you know, this is the frustration of it, we're being positioned as it's either this or that, is this a little group over here who are basically kind of getting in the way of everybody kind of getting on with their lives? We'll actually know because the sorts of things we're asking for that are going to be incredible importance to us and incredible impact if they're not there are much, much wider benefit. If you put air filters in, air filtration, that removes all kinds of viruses, allergens, pollution, the general health benefits, they're going to be widespread, maybe that's how you protect the NHS, you know, it's rethinking this fundamentally and trying to get out of the kind of mindset we've got into at the eye of the rule, because that's really not where we are now, and of course people have personal choice, and I completely respect that, except where their personal choice causes direct harm to others, and you know, it's very, again, there are plenty of analogies out there of, you know, steep belts and so on, which people are not, people aren't being told not to drive, but they are told they need to pass a drive each time they wear steep belts and do certain things on the road. Yeah, no, as Murdo says, you're being heard loud and clear, and does anyone else want to come in on that particular point? Thank you very much, and I think all members will agree that it's been really insightful and informative, so I'd like to thank all the witnesses for their evidence and giving us their time this morning. If witnesses would like to raise any further evidence with the committee, they can do so in writing and the clerks will be happy to liaise with you yourselves about how to do that. The committee's next meeting will be on the 30th of June, when we will take evidence from the Minister for Public Health, Women's Health and Sport on the inquiry into COVID-19 communication of public health information. We will also consider a negative instrument next week as well. That concludes the public part of our meeting this morning, and I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave and for this meeting to be moved into private. Thank you.