Prof Paul Hunter to join prestigious Cambridge Union lockdown debate
By: News Archive
UEA’s Prof Paul Hunter will join other leading medical experts to debate global lockdown measures at a virtual Cambridge Union debate on Thursday.
The Cambridge Union is the world’s oldest debating society and has hosted speakers including Presidents Roosevelt and Reagan, Prime Ministers Churchill, Thatcher, and Nehru, and Emperor Haile Selassie. More recently, it has also heard from the likes of Bill Gates, Bernie Sanders and Ban Ki-Moon.
Across the world, many governments have taken aggressive action in recent weeks to curtail freedom of movement and enforce social distancing in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Starting in Hubei in January, billions of people have been impacted by both the virus and these downstream effects.
The motion of the debate will be ‘This House Backs Global Governments’ Lockdowns’. It will take place online via Youtube.
Prof Paul Hunter, an expert infectious diseases from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, will discuss the effectiveness and ethics of these lockdown measures.
He will be joined by experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to argue for the benefits of lockdown.
Opposition will come from Dr Anders Tegnell, the State Epidemiologist of the Swedish Public Health Agency where he leads the government’s response to the pandemic, and Mail on Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens, as well as experts from Yale University and Tel Aviv University.
Prof Hunter is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization and has sat on several UK and International advisory committees.
He has become a major voice on Covid-19, providing expert commentary as the pandemic has unfolded.
From appearing on ITV This Morning, Newsnight and BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast Show to articles in Yahoo News, the New York Times and CNN – Prof Hunter has appeared in more than 8,000 news article and broadcast pieces.
He has also published papers on the effectiveness of facemasks and how the rise of fake news helps the spread of infectious disease. The 90-minute event will be livestreamed at 6pm on Thursday, April 23, via Youtube.
For more information, including details about all the speakers, visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/227498378345842/
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