Thread by @michael_riordan

Reading @LucyGoBag’s wonderful book #WhenTheDustSettles. It’s so good because Lucy connects narrative and analysis to show how broad policy lessons can emerge not through stats and data (I thought Lucy’s discussion of her dyspraxia was relevant here)…perspectivemag.co.uk/the-interview-… 1/8

but from very individual experiences, which she narrates through personal stories which will have resonances with most of her readers (I’m not with my copy now but it is full of underlinings, YESes and exclamation marks). 2/8

There so much to learn from this book, but two things came out for me reading it *now*: I’m not thinking about Covid here, but about momkeypox 3/8

Lucy opens with a discussion of the Hillsborough disaster, which was one of her earliest experiences of disaster growing up in Liverpool. She shows how an early narrative - that Liverpool fans, not police, were to blame - continued to shape understandings of the disaster 4/8

long after the ‘dust had settled’. A major theme is how decisions taken at ground zero can effect these longer term narratives, which link disasters to groups (Liverpool fans, gay men), not institutions & structures. I think @UKHSA would do well to learn this lesson with MPX 5/8

https://twitter.com/DrSophieHarman/status/1528718870378385408

The 2nd lesson, for me, was people (like Liverpool fans) are the real experts in disaster. They kept the flame of truth burning when experts hung on to dangerous narratives. Anyone who has studied history of the AIDS crisis in the US or UK context can see relevance here 5/8

One of the things I’ve noticed when engaging with public health ‘experts’ on Twitter is a narrow credentialism — ‘If you are an expert in Covid, don’t talk about monkeypox’ or, to me, ‘What does an historian know about STI transmission’. 6/8

Lucy’s argument is that those impacted by a policy are often experts in disaster in a way that distasterologists, authorities, or other experts are not: and to make good policy, those effected by it need to be brought in. This was a lesson learnt by the CDC and UK government 7/8

after the AIDS crisis, but — as with many of the disasters Lucy chronicles — too late to prevent the delay having negative impacts - stigma and lack of engagement by those affected. 8/8

hachette.co.uk/titles/lucy-ea…