Coronavirus: Resilience during a year of the pandemic

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One year ago, the World Health Organisation announced that Covid-19 was spreading across different countries at such an alarming rate that it needed to be classed as a pandemic. It has been a challenging year for everyone and host Nuala McGovern shares conversations with people who perhaps don’t always receive public recognition for their work or actions. This includes one of the researchers who helped make the first vaccine to be approved for use around the world and two of the volunteers who took part in successful vaccine trials. We also hear from supermarket workers in South Africa, the US and the UK about the stress keeping shelves full while working with hundreds of customers - some of whom don’t always respect their jobs or safety during a pandemic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Nula McGovran on the BBC World Service and this is BBC OS conversations
0:06.3	resilience during a year of the pandemic.
0:09.7	It has been an incredibly tough 12 months, but for many of us there appears to be hope on the horizon thanks to vaccines and one scientist who helped create a jab he
0:26.2	received news of its success while he was at his mother's funeral.
0:30.4	What a day of conflicting emotions, you know sadness for my mom but such an amazing
0:36.3	outcome and she would have been you know she was very proud of what I do. Yeah it was
0:40.9	quite a day.
0:49.0	That was Nicholas Kitchen and he'll share more of his experiences a little later. For Nicholas and all of us, our lives changed in March 2020 when the World Health
0:55.2	Organization declared an official pandemic. The statistics and the loss of life
1:01.5	due to the coronavirus it's almost unfathomable more than 2.5 million
1:06.9	deaths from COVID-19 and 117 million cases around the world.
1:14.0	During this last unprecedented year,
1:16.6	we have highlighted the effect the pandemic has had
1:19.6	on people's lives, from doctors and cleaners to lorry drivers and farmers by sharing
1:26.3	conversations from across the globe. And these conversations have revealed a
1:31.8	range of emotions and experiences, grief, loneliness, stress and economic hardship.
1:40.0	But the pandemic has also revealed our humanity in the form of bravery, kindness, sacrifice and generosity.
1:49.0	And one word often comes to mind on hearing about people's lives during this challenging time.
1:55.7	Resilience.
1:57.4	For many people, the restrictions even inspired an outburst of artistic creativity. Three women from Illinois in the United States, for example,
2:07.0	definitely caught the mood when their musical creation was streamed more than 50 million times in 2020.
2:14.7	Yo, my cat died in a global pandemic took over my life and I put out some music that
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