Q&A with Anjana Ahuja
"We sensed the government was desperate to kick the inquiry can down the road and offer a revisionist narrative."
The Orwell Prizes for Political Writing and Political Fiction 2022 shortlists, released last month, highlight the finest politically engaged books published in 2021. Ahead of the announcement of the winners at the Orwell Festival on the 14th July 2022, we have been sharing new writing and insights from this year’s shortlisted writers. To see the lists, visit our website here.
In early January 2020, Anjana Ahuja was one of the first UK journalists to chronicle a worrying new respiratory virus in Wuhan. She is co-author, with Sir Jeremy Farrar, of the 2021 bestseller Spike: The Virus vs. The People, an insider account of the Covid-19 pandemic, and now a finalist for The Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2022. We asked Anjana about the co-writing process, the book’s key lessons and more.
Spike was a collaboration with Sir Jeremy Farrar, drawing on his experiences as a member of Sage and the Director of the Wellcome Trust during the pandemic (and as a senior scientist in his own right). How did the collaboration work, on a practical level? In what ways did it shape the book?
Jeremy made the smart decision in January 2020 to keep a weekly diary-cum-blog of what was happening with this weird virus out of Wuhan, setting out what was known and unknown and how things might pan out, which he would then e-mail to a small group of people. For me, this incredibly prescient contemporaneous record was the obvious backbone for the book: focusing week by week, month by month, on the key plot twists in the pandemic both in the UK and abroad. These included discussions over the virus origins in February 2020, the panic setting in over here in March 2020, and the build up to the deadly second UK wave in autumn 2020.
Jeremy and I had weekly 2-hour Zoom meetings, where we would drill down into these key moments in excruciating detail. It was critical from my perspective to rely not just on Jeremy’s records and recollections but to seek out independent verification, so the book is packed with interviews I conducted with key people, such as Sydney University scientist Eddie Holmes (who pushed for the genome sequence to be released in early January), modellers John Edmunds and Neil Ferguson, and Dominic Cummings. It also contains relevant documentary evidence, such as emails and WhatsApps messages.
I would write the chapters and then we would go through them. It worked surprisingly smoothly: Jeremy was very open to robust challenge, and understood the need to be candid about what, in retrospect, he and other scientists got wrong. We both wanted to write an accurate and honest, rather than diplomatic and comfortable account, of what happened, especially as we sensed the government was desperate to kick the inquiry can down the road and offer a revisionist narrative.
Reviewers have described the revelations in Spike as a 'political reckoning' - Farrar is often fiercely critical of the government's handling of the crisis and very open about his own doubts and fears as he grappled with the question of Covid's origins. What was the most shocking thing you learnt while researching the book?
Where to start? The sheer number of people in power who lacked even the most rudimentary idea of how diseases spread. The raging dysfunction within government, exemplified by a meeting in Downing St on diagnostic test procurement. The baffling sense of exceptionalism infecting the Cabinet, which saw ministers act, or rather not act, as if what was happening in other countries would not happen here. The number of random people outside government pleading with contacts inside government to do something in early 2020. The courage of scientists, both here and abroad, who did speak up about the coming disaster, sometimes at great cost to themselves. The remarkable ease of access by fringe scientists to the PM and his inner circle. Confirmation bias and wishful thinking as core principles in government decision making. The willingness of those setting policies to cherry-pick data to support an ideological agenda, even though the cherries were rotten (where's our promised herd immunity?). The constant repetition of the same mistakes. The lack of attention paid to the precautionary principle: the clinically vulnerable are still being ignored, in my view, despite the growing evidence of Long Covid. There is also a revelation at the end of the first chapter that made my jaw drop (sorry, no spoilers!).
Reliving the last few years is a difficult process for a lot of people. Has writing Spike effected how you think about your own experiences during the pandemic?
One always assumes that, in a crisis, the grown-ups – i.e. the Government - know what they’re doing. I just could not believe the chaos in the corridors of power in a pandemic. In one way, it confirmed the distressing sense I had around March 2020 that I’ve never really relinquished, to be honest: that I cannot rely on the Government to keep my family safe in a pandemic. Those are words I never thought I’d ever need to write. As a consequence, I realised pretty quickly that I needed to make my own decisions, such as continuing to wear a mask in crowded settings and test before seeing family when transmission is rising, no matter what government policy was. I find it so depressing that straightforward measures like masking have been politicised in the US and UK in a way that hasn’t happened in other countries. I don’t think I will ever understand why people are so blasé about being repeatedly infected by a virus that may have damaging long-term effects on the brain and body.
On a personal front, in early 2020, as the virus took hold, I think I went through a process of grieving, for a carefree way of life that might be gone for good. My children were suddenly growing up in a new pandemic world, with all the uncertainties for their future. I knew early on there was no guarantee that this virus would simply disappear like Sars-1, however much everyone wanted it to. I have been very fortunate not to lose any family members to Covid, though I lost my dad in August 2020 and the Covid restrictions meant I could not see him in hospital before he died. I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose a child, or a spouse or a close relative, to Covid. The bereaved and those with long Covid have been ignored.
On a professional level, I and other science writers have been banging on about ‘the next pandemic’ for years but it still shocks you when it happens. Our household was lucky not to lose income during the pandemic – actually, I worked harder than I have ever done in my career, and I am so grateful that my teenage children managed to cope.
Was the original letter to the Lancet condemning speculation about Covid being lab-based as 'conspiracy theories' a mistake?
I have asked Jeremy about this. His argument is that the letter kept the lines of global communication on the issue open for longer than would otherwise have been the case. Still, he does accept that the polarisation on this issue might have been avoidable with more considered diplomacy on both sides. In retrospect, he would not have used the word ‘conspiracy’.
His worry is the danger of a false equivalence when it comes to the science on origins. The greatest risk for new pandemics comes from nature: climate and ecological change, habitat loss, urbanisation and human-animal contact. As far as I am concerned, I don’t think anything has since come to light which has substantially and credibly shifted thinking on the origins issue.
What, for you, are the key lessons of the book - and are they being learnt?
They are too numerous to list, though I have set out some of them above. We now seem to be heading into yet another wave with the BA5 Omicron variant. We will have to see whether the UK does anything differently. For example, it could take softer measures now, such as masking, ventilation, expanding NHS capacity and financially supporting people to isolate. These are ways of controlling transmission while avoiding lockdowns.
Anjana Ahuja is an award-winning freelance science journalist and a regular opinion writer at the Financial Times, where she covers a wide range of issues in science, tech and global health. She is particularly fascinated by the social, political and ethical implications of research. Recent articles have covered a global bill of AI rights, radical life extension and the controversial sponsorship of climate science exhibitions by fossil fuel companies.