On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to Professor Calum Semple, a member of the SAGE Committee that advises Boris Johnson. He discusses the changing pattern of hospitalisations with younger people including children filling up hospitals rather than the elderly, the growing threat of ‘long Covid’ causing additional health problems for those who have recovered from the initial infection and the damage caused by Covid to internal organs during hospitalisation, reports of the UK government considering rolling out vaccinations to 12-15-year-olds, and why the case for vaccinating children is growing stronger, whether we will see a new British variant as lockdown restrictions have been lifted with much of the population still not fully vaccinated, and much more! Finally, we speak to Philippe Lacôte, director of the film ‘Night of The Kings’, a film about life inside one of West Africa’s most notorious prisons, La Maca, which is located in Ivory Coast. He discusses the film’s goal to portray the longstanding West African tradition of griots passing on history, poems, and stories orally, his own mother being incarcerated at La Maca, how society operates in prisons, the colonial rule of Ivory Coast by France, and how France still continues to dominate Ivory Coast’s economics and politics, and much more!
