Siri Melchior Tellier had a long and varied career in international development cooperation, humanitarian action and teaching. She passed away in October 2022 and this conversation with Lars Peter Nissen was recorded in August 2020 during the Pandemic.

It is a conversation about public health, data, standards, trust, learning and failing and having the courage to make yourself part of the mess and make a difference in the world.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (0:53 - 2:05)

[Siri Melchior Tellier] (2:05 - 2:07)

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (2:07 - 2:32)

We know each other from the Red Cross where we worked together, I guess, almost 20 years ago, and I've always so enjoyed your perspective on the industry we work in. You have a very fresh perspective, and so I'm so happy you took time to do this. Thank you. Maybe we can start by you telling us a bit about your background. Where did you start out in terms of your career?

[Siri Melchior Tellier] (2:32 - 5:10)

I come from a rather international family, but I guess in my family it's always been clear that you're here on Earth to make it a better world. It was just a little bit unclear to me in the beginning how I would do that, but it was clear that was the goal. Making the world better.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (5:11 - 5:19)

And so this very strong drive you come into the sector with, this idealism. Has all this experience chipped away at that, or is that still there?

[Siri Melchior Tellier] (5:20 - 6:01)

I don't think it's chipped away at it. Because, no, I don't think it has. I still am very irritating.

You know, anything that goes wrong in Denmark, I always feel I have to do something about it. And it's just this tremendous drive which I have from my, especially my father. And no, I don't think it's gone away. Of course sometimes I'm irritated at myself that I spend so much time thinking how I can change the world. I mean, give me a break. It's time to do something else. But you can. You can change things. That's what keeps my drive still there, is because I think I have made a difference.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (6:02 - 6:07)

And so what's the biggest difference you've made? What's the thing you're most proud about in your group?

[Siri Melchior Tellier] (6:07 - 7:31)

[Lars Peter Nissen] (7:33 - 7:37)

So, did you work with UNFPA both times in China?

[Siri Melchior Tellier] (7:37 - 7:38)

Yes. Both times in China, yes.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (7:38 - 7:40)

And the second time you came back as a representative?

[Siri Melchior Tellier] (7:40 - 7:47)

Yes, I was there as a representative the first time, too. Not much career development, but I wanted to see what happened.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (7:48 - 7:53)

So, in building that relationship with the Chinese government, what was the most important?

Yeah. Look. China is, if you haven't noticed, a big country. And I'm just one person and a small organization. And so obviously you can't do something unless you have a common goal. And so, this was a long-term developmental kind of program. And, of course, you have to they have to respect you, and you have to respect them. And be honest with each other about where you want to go. Very honest. Because there are certain things you can't change and certain things you can change. And if you have international consensus on something, then it's a lot easier to try to change in that direction. Nobody lives up to international consensus, but, you know, try to go in that direction. So, I mean, it's obvious that they're, again, the ones who are driving it. And you have to see, do we agree on where we want to go? Is this an agreement with international consensus? That's your biggest strength. That's what, you know, you've got your back free, because that's there. And then you have to understand people's motivation. That, to me, is both one of the most fun things in life, and also one of the most interesting, and it's a necessary thing if you want to sort of change things long-term. And I think I told you before, but one of the most beautiful speeches I've ever had was when I left China and they gave me actually a prize, which was more, it meant more to me than I thought, and the speech they said, thank you for understanding us. That did not mean that they thought I agreed with them, but it meant that they thought I had made an effort to understand their motivation, because otherwise it would be impossible to work together. And again, I emphasize, it does not mean we agreed. But we found things where we agreed, we found things that we did agree on, and ways of, they used us to actually help change. That's what the purpose they saw. I have to use a Chinese expression, Deng Xiaoping, who says that if you want to get to the other side of the river, it's nice to have stepping stones. And so we, we're stepping stones. We try out this, we try out that, and then we get to the other side of the river.

But still, in spite of being a stepping stone, you...

I like being a stepping stone.

Yeah, you're able to maintain your idealism.

Absolutely.

So that's not contradiction.

No, idealism, I mean, stepping stone, to me, is not a bad thing. It's something that saves you from drowning.

Yep.

I don't mind being instrumentalized, being useful.

And so, what you just described for me is sort of a very solid developmental approach to building partnerships, working, finding common ground, leaning up against international normative frameworks and so on. How does all of that change when you move into the humanitarian sphere?

Well, I think some things change and some things don't. I mean, you have different purposes in life, basically. In emergency, you basically, the first sort of high-profile purpose is that you're saving lives. That you, you know, trying to avoid that there's huge excess mortality. And so you're, and you often have a very short time frame, and you don't have time to understand each other totally. Because that takes time, and you have to build trust with each other. So, I mean, you're trying to do some of those things, but you can't, and you're coming in because, again, the sort of classical view of humanitarian is, and you can like it or not like it, is that the local society cannot cope. And so it needs outside assistance to survive.

I mean, for me, maybe the definition of a humanitarian situation is, it's not when you send out an ambulance, it's when you run out of ambulances. That's when the system breaks down. And that's why it should be highly transitory and only used when you really really need to. Because it's a very blunt tool.

Absolutely. And you have to know, because it changes over time. I think that's one of the most interesting things. You know, if you have an earthquake in Nepal, and you have 6 million people who are affected, my field is often maternal health, and you've got to know that people don't stop having babies just because of an earthquake. And so you will have 10,000 women who are giving birth in the next month, and they, you know, 10% of them will need a cesarean, otherwise they will die. And they will die two hours from now. Hemorrhage takes only two hours to kill a woman. So you need to do it now. And how do you do that? And which corners do you cut? And which fights do you have in order to get that? And which, especially if we're going to be talking about data, how do you find out how many maternity kits you need? And you only have one hour in Kathmandu, then you're going by car out to the area, and there's no Wi-Fi. So you need to be able to know very quickly what is it that I need. That's the emergency one. Now, many people think that's all there is to emergencies. Of course, there's also the 10-20 year perspective when you have a refugee settlement in Uganda. And you have to know which phase you're in. I think that's very important, to know which phase you're in.

Yeah, and you know, it's something we've discussed for decades. These days we call it the nexus.

Yeah, I think we called it something like that before too. It's been there for us.

The grey zone, linking relief to development. I mean, there's a lot of different concepts that essentially say the same things. How do you get these two systems to operate seamlessly?

Now, have we gotten better at it?

I think we have gotten better in some ways, in many ways actually. I think for example, when I started working with the Red Cross, that was in 1992, we had no standards. Or we as a field had few standards. You would have the Rwanda crisis in 1994, and people came out and had wildly different standards for what they should do. That makes it much more difficult for the local government or the local society to take it over when you leave, and hopefully you do leave. And so if you have one pump, that's one kind, and another pump, which is a different kind. I was working a lot with pumps at those days. It's very difficult for the local population to know how to fix them. That's a developmental issue also, but in a humanitarian situation, you're installing all this stuff, and then you're leaving behind a mess, because you're teaching people who will not be able to get...let me give you an example. I think it was Myanmar. Was it Myanmar? Or was it Cambodia? I think it was Cambodia. Where one of the assessments was that all these donors had trained 20, 30, 40 different medical categories, none of which were compatible with the local definition of what a doctor should do, or what a nurse should do, or whatever else. They couldn't be integrated afterwards. What a shame! But you don't have time. So it's this internal fight against time, which I think is very interesting, where you have to cut corners. Anyway, you asked whether it got better. So I think we got better at the standards. I think we really got a lot better on that. Everybody's citing some of these interagency committee standards, or the sphere standards. Everybody's citing these. That's nice. I like it. Not that you can always live up to it.

Some of them are stupid. But at least you are not realistic. But at least you know, more or less, what you can disagree with. So that's a good thing. I think, in general, you don't have quite as many people who have never been outside Denmark who suddenly arrive in Rwanda and are supposed to look after a refugee camp. No, you don't have that so much anymore. Coordination? Now, we may disagree on this a little bit. I think we've gotten better. At least you have meetings, but of course I mean meetings, this is a horrible word, but of course a meeting can just be a waste of time. I think they figured out in Mozambique that they spent 40% of their efforts on coordination. Something like that. I mean, instead of getting... And we still don't have, and this really upsets me, because I am data obsessed, is you know, when you have 40-50 different health surveys in Haiti by different organizations with different definitions, so you cannot get a... you know, wasting time and you're not getting a normal picture out of it. Just to be able to show with your own t-shirt on TV that you have the data. This is a horrible part of it.

Just to get back to you on the coordination side of things. So, I don't disagree that we've gotten better. I think my issue is...

Because we are so bad.

There's that, but there's also that we have somehow detached the exercise of coordination from the benefit we derive on it, right? So what's the return on investment?

It's sterile.

What is the optimal level of duplication? If you spend $10 million coordinating, you can duplicate distribution for $9 million and still get a better outcome.

Yeah, absolutely. Cost benefit of it.

And that's I think is where my issue lies. And I probably tend to think that we need to replace coordination and... sorry, we need to replace coordination with collaboration as the central operating principles. But that's a very long story and I'd love to talk data with you.

Yeah.

So should we jump into the data discussion? I mean, so in a humanitarian situation you're under time pressure, you often have no clue what's going on and still you have to make decisions. So talk a bit around your take on data, decision-making support.

Yeah. Okay. I think I'd like to start out with some quotes from other people with which I totally agree. One of them is, I've heard it from Gilbert Burnham from Johns Hopkins, I don't know whether he made it up, but he says, public health is about making decisions on incomplete information. And that is, of course, especially so in a humanitarian situation. But let's face it, that's the rest of life too. You're always making decisions on incomplete information. It's just that in a humanitarian situation things are changing so quickly and you don't have time to gather all those data. So, I mean, how do you find some really smart data and not just correct data? And then I want to quote what I believe is somebody called, what's his called, Garfield? What's his first name again?

Dr. Richard Garfield.

And you also quote that in ACAPS and that is number one, know what you want to know. Number two, make sense, not data. And number three, it's better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. I love those. Because people gather data on things that really are not useful and what they often do is to say, oh, we have this situation, everything is new, we have to go and gather data everywhere. You don't have to. You should be brave enough to collect data all the way from the, in Afghanistan, the white beard guy. He knows a lot of stuff. The taxi driver always knows a lot of stuff. As well as walking around and seeing things and what you can get online and what you know the standards are from whatever. And you don't even have to necessarily always look it up in SPHERE. You should have some things in your cortex of what you can expect. Otherwise, why do you go to university if you don't expect anything? And so I think it's that thing of making sense, not data, not more data. Because if you want really statistically significant stuff, it'll take you three years and cost three million dollars. And then the last one, be approximately right rather than precisely wrong. You're always operating within uncertainties. So exactly as you were saying before, cost-benefit of making it even more precise. For somebody like me who is sort of swayed by statistical thinking, that doesn't matter. I mean, yeah, you don't have to have it precise. It doesn't have to be confidence level of this and that.

You use the word brave.

Yeah.

Have we become less brave as a community?

Probably. I mean, bravery is to my mind is having courage to, maybe that's what comes when you standardize everything. Then you think, okay, I go according to the standards, otherwise I get fired. So you don't have to think. Maybe that's part of it. Yeah, I think that might be part of it, that you don't have to think yourself because it's already there. That's a very dangerous in general in life and especially humanitarian situations. I mean, I've been working on and off with humanitarian. It was the full-time job for 10 years when I was director of Red Cross International, but International Red Cross and Danish Red Cross. But yeah, I think yeah, I think I'm not sure and I don't think anybody's come up with something I really think this is really what it is. But I think when you do have all these standards and coordination, maybe you say, okay, I'll just do whatever else is saying, not rock the boat.

So standards make us less brave?

Depends on what kind of person you are, I think. I think standards make me more brave because if I agree with them, I often disagree, you know. But I mean, again, if you go something like human rights standards or humanitarian law standards, you are a much stronger person coming into somewhere. You feel your shoulders are down because you know what you're thinking is something that has been signed by the whole world, all the countries of the world almost. So you think, this is not just me, Siri, saying this. This is something where I know that we should have some other. It's a great difference, huge difference. And that one, I think, is good bravery, good courage. But of course, you also have to have the courage of saying right now, not human rights, don't worry, I'm not. Yeah, sometimes human rights, you can't necessarily get through to 100%, but you can say you can get 30%, whatever it is. But I mean, you also have to have the courage to, certainly on the standards that are technical standards, and say, look, maybe we won't be able to provide 15 liters of water, maybe we can do with less and just the first weeks. But as long as we know we're working towards something or other and that other people are also working toward that, that's where coordination should come in, that you're not working toward different standards. That's what went wrong in Rwanda. When everybody's working on different standards, and then what do you do with the population when you leave? Does that make sense?

Yeah, very much so.

So, I mean, one of the things, so I believe those four principles I mentioned before by Gilbert Vernon and by by Richard Garfield. Richard Garfield, yes. And all of them actually require you to think. You don't just go to the sphere handbook and it says that 3% of the population will be such and such. Yes, you go to that, but you also try to think yourself.

You know the difference between a roundabout and a traffic light?

No, tell me.

Roundabouts are safer than traffic lights. But most people prefer traffic lights. Because it's clear when you go and when you don't go, it's either red or green. Whereas when you have a roundabout, you have to be aware of your other people in traffic, and you have to have a much stronger situation awareness. And I sometimes think that the problem we have is that we it's so nice that it's red or green, so we know whether to go or not. And then we stop thinking about the other players, and actually we end up with a system that is less safe, and especially because we work in very messy situations.

Yeah, you need something that you can hold on to. Because you're going to make, you are, I mean, when I teach this, when I've been teaching this course on health and emergencies for 10 years, and one of the words we use all the time is dilemmas. There is no answer. It's something where you have to make a decision, it's not yeah, it's dilemmas. You may not have an answer, an easy one, red or green.

So how do you institutionalize that? Because I think the problem is that we obviously don't want operations like Rwanda, which was a disgrace.

And everybody, it's a good standard to have of what not to do.

Yes. But if we then lose the practicality or the sensibility of how to apply these standards.

How do you do that?

How do you institutionalize it?

I don't know. I don't know. What I think works well is to have a learning atmosphere in the office. That's very difficult if you're in a hurry. But what I find very interesting, and I've found it works, is that every time you've done a major thing in your group, then you just have, instead of doing an evaluation, yes, evaluations are also great, but instead of doing that, to have it built into your daily work, so that you sit maybe once a week and say, what went right and what went wrong? And you, if you're the boss, you start out by saying what you yourself think you did wrong. Or you could do better next time. It's not right or wrong, but you know, things where you thought, hmm, maybe this, then it becomes okay to talk about what's good and what's bad, without saying, ah, you're to blame. Sometimes what I've done, but that's only helpful if you have a wall. You don't always have a wall. But I put some of the problems up on the wall and then so that people sit there and look at them and say, for example, if you have an auditor report, and they say, you know, you don't have backup. Some of it's very innocent and some of it's not so innocent. That's what I did sometimes in my office in North Korea. And we put this on the wall and then every time we had a meeting, we would look at them and say, have we progressed on it? Then it externalizes the problem. It's not your problem. It's something we have together. Now, I don't know whether this to my mind, that helps you become willing to face things that you could have done better without feeling that you have to go and whip yourself. And I think, you know, anyway, that's just a general approach to life. But I think it also works a little bit in humanitarian situations. Does that make sense to you?

Yeah. It's something I've been thinking a lot about because is the problem that we attract the wrong personality profiles to the sector so that we end up with bean counters who are only happy when all the blankets are accounted for? Or is it that the combination of being very driven and motivated by an idealism combined with by definition putting yourself into a situation where you will fail. That makes us seek safer ground.

I can't remember who said this, but it's so nice. We do, we fail. We do again, we fail better.

Do you remember who said that?

It's the whole fail forward thinking.

I love that.

Yeah.

And, I mean, accepting also that you're not going to do everything right. But, I mean, it's not just about not doing, about making mistakes. It's also, you know, yeah. But, of course, also into this comes the whole accountability issue. And, I mean, we all know this. I'm not saying something original. But if you have a humanitarian situation, basically part of the definition, at least it used to be, is that humanitarian situation is when the local society can't cope with whatever it is. Whether it's not enough hospital beds, we've seen it during Corona also that we're trying to stay that we can cope with things. And then all these other people come in to sort of cope for you. I've forgotten what my point was.

Maybe we'll cut that out. So, maybe what it boils down to is accountability.

Yes. I think that's at least a very large part of it. Now, I'm all in favor of, you know, are you for or against? I'm for accountability. But it's just how it's done and to whom. And it's nothing new, I'm saying. It's just so difficult to implement. I mean, this is not because people are stupid or nasty. It's difficult. For example, let me give you an example. So, during some of these food crises in North Korea, I was also there for some of it. And we would have in the central medical store of the government, there would be 10, 20 different rub holes with medicines in them from each of the different agencies, from Red Cross, from UNICEF, from everybody else. And God help me, I also made one for UNFPA. So, we had all these rub holes and each of them had their own truck bringing stuff out. And there was no coordination because the government didn't have any clue what was in them. Now, most countries, you don't agree on everything with the government. But each of these rub holes, why were they there? Why couldn't they just get together? Well, I mean, and train people locally to look after them. It's a great job to look after rub holes. It's very interesting. So, why is it? Well, because they were all accountable to their own donors. They had to account for how many maternity kits they had brought out. And it couldn't be that somebody else was accountable for it. No, they had to have their own truck where they could tick off. And so, it's partially also the accountability to your donors. And, of course, also accountability to the public.

You have to be able to get on TV with your T-shirt that says UNFPA. Nobody tells you to do that, but that's how you get money. If you get on TV with your own T-shirt, and then people say, oh, these people know. They have the data. They must know. And then they get money.

And so, the interesting thing about what you just said is that we know this. And we know this fully.

And we don't.

And we've seen it for decades, right?

Yes. I mean, people in humanitarian business basically want to do to make the world better. Like, I have that idealism. Basically, I think that idealism is there for most people. Yes, there are also many other things. There are the perks. There is the this and that. But I think most of them, at some level, most people in the world, I think, no, maybe not. I sometimes mistake things. But I think most of them working in humanitarian actually would like to make the world better.

Yeah. I agree with that. And so, I think the really interesting question is you, we started this conversation talking about idealism.

Yeah.

And clearly, you're driven by that.

Yes.

And you're telling me the years haven't chipped away at your idealism.

No.

Why not? You're there in North Korea. You put up your own rock wall. You're part of the problem. Yes. Why doesn't it chip away at your idealism?

Well, I guess maybe I'm just the person I am. I mean, I don't, I think there are different kinds of, I just have an eternal positive attitude. I can't help it. I was born with it. But it's also because despite all of this, you can see there is progress. Of course there is progress. I mean, the maternity kits we provided in North Korea, of course they made a difference. They have very, you have to recognize the strength of each country also. I don't know whether I'm allowed to talk about this, but actually North Korea, they have very educated people, and they have very educated professionals. And I remember once walking with one of my Korean colleagues. We were visiting, just sort of stopping the jeep because it was a temple we wanted to walk around. And some guy who was looking after the temple came over and said, what's this foreigner doing? That's what I was told. And then my colleague explained, we're here because we want to help the maternal mortality. And the man was so happy. He smiled and he said, thank you, thank you, thank you. He wants to do that too. I mean, there's this motivation that you can find in your colleagues and normal people in the country, and you can actually help to improve it. And we did. The maternal mortality improved. And you can have all kinds of discussions with people on the way and say, but what about this guideline and what about that guideline? How did it work? Yes. And you can help them actually have the accountability, a sensible accountability, and let them get interested in making things better. Because you can show them, not show them, they know. But I mean, you can be, as again, the sort of the stepping stone, you can be the one who's helping them to access new information. You are their window on the world, sometimes.

And I think you once told me that in all your travels you learned only two things. One, how much alike people are, and secondly, how different people are.

And that's something I actually learned when I was five. We moved to Norway. And try to explain, I mean, this is getting linguistic, but I mean, try to speak as a little girl of five with little girls of five in Norway and you have completely different ideas of what some of the words are, and some of the words are the same. Like the numbers words, forget it. I really was a laughing stock. I said, they said, what? And that's what's fun. I mean, I think also what's important in this, yes, I want to help the world, but it helps that, first of all, I get paid for it. Yes, that's nice. And it helps that it's very interesting. It's eternally interesting. Public health, to my mind, is eternally interesting. And you learn about yourself. I think that's interesting. You learn why you hold the values that you do. So why are you different from these other people? Why are they different from you? That's one question, but why are you different from them is another question.

I think a lot of what you're saying is really around empathy.

Yeah, of course it is. I'm not the only person in the world who has empathy, but I think it's, empathy is both interesting and a good thing, I think. I mean, it's also interesting if you, and I can quote now, Halston Mahler, former head of WTO, so he knows his stuff on health systems. And he said once to me, the most important thing in a health system is motivation. Forget about vaccines, forget about everything else, the motivation. I thought that was beautiful. And I think it's very true. Yes, you also do need vaccines. But, I mean, the thought that the most important thing is what motivates people. If you don't have, if you don't know that, you're lost.

And so with your public health background, as we speak, we're in the middle of one of the biggest global crises we've ever seen. What do you see?

Well, I think it's very interesting, because I was telling the head of our department, I was saying, look, we just have to tape the whole thing and then replay it in August, we don't have to teach anymore. Because people are learning all kinds of concepts that, you know, I couldn't, you know, I spent hours trying to teach the thought of herd immunity, or what is called an English reproduction number, that is how quickly you pass it on to others. Those things, it was, you know, I really had to struggle to get people to understand it. And now everybody knows. And one of the most important things, I think, I hope, at least some people have taken on board, is that we don't know everything. And that we have to be, as Gilbert Vernon says, we have to be humble enough to say we don't know everything.

And on the other hand, we have to be brave enough to do something. I think that's very wise saying. And I think that COVID-19 is teaching people that we don't know very much, actually, we're learning all the time.

Yeah, it really does test our tolerance for ambiguity, I think.

Yes. And different countries are doing it so differently. And what do the leaders say?

Do they talk about we, or do they talk about I and they? You know, it's all this how do you approach public health? I think it's very interesting.

What are the implications for the humanitarian sector?

Yeah. A lot of people have talked about that. I don't know. I think one of the things some journalists asked me, is some of the, it's, I think it's two-way learning. One of the most important things, I think, is this ethical principle of triage. Where, I was talking about with a journalist who said, what can we learn from the humanitarian sector? And I said, one of the most scary parts of humanitarian ethics is triage, where if you have, the difference usually is between mass casualty and, multiple casualty and mass casualty. Multiple casualty, sorry, is when you have, you're stretched, but you can still manage. And you can still treat those who are most sick first. Versus mass casualty, where you have, it's overwhelmed.

You run out of ambulances.

You run out of ambulances or beds or whatever it is, and you then start treating those who are most likely to survive. So this scary thing we've had in several countries, I won't mention names, where they say we're not going to treat people over 60. And it may be a humanitarian principle you're living up to.That's pretty scary. And I mean, the question is also, when do you decide that? You know, if you're really overwhelmed, maybe that's what happens. If you're not that overwhelmed, is that a little bit too early to put that principle into place? So it's timing or something, also. In context. You're nodding, I mean, it's scary.

Well, I think that we talked about empathy, and I think the fact that we have become the victims of this one may enhance our empathy. I also think it reshapes our understanding of how physically we work together. I do think it will disrupt the way we work in a number of ways. The thing that stands out to me is how we handle ambiguity. And I think where we go wrong is we always want to put it in a box.

Yes, but that's exactly what I mean also, that we don't know everything. We don't know what the situation is and how to handle it. And I think it's very dangerous to say we know everything and we are doing it the right way. I don't think we know yet. And I really hope, because I think it is a very healthy thing for people to know that we don't know everything and that we do have dilemmas and ambiguity as you say. I'm hoping that will stay.

Yes, I do too, and I think there are two different aspects to the ambiguity. On one side, we actually don't know what things mean. We don't know a lot about the disease. And on the other hand, we don't have good data. So we don't know what the dashboard is telling us. And we don't know whether the speed is correct either.

And of course, if you've gone to university, you know that viruses usually behave in such and such a way. But at this point, we really don't know, for example, the big thing is immunity. We don't know how much and how quickly and all kinds of things. Without that, it's very difficult to decide on the strategy.

And so what it really has done for me is my thinking is around humanitarian action as a narrative. How do you shape the narrative? What's the story of COVID-19? We just don't know. We have a whole bunch of assumptions around oh, Africa is going to be really badly affected. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Latin America right now is really badly affected. Why is that? Is it because we don't measure it in certain African countries? Is it because we just don't know? And so not knowing what the story is, it's like a car spinning its wheel. It doesn't know where to go.

And I think the most scary part of it, scary being because the numbers are scary, is are we, some people say, in the beginning I had some sympathy for thinking let's just develop hereditary and some people will die. But maybe, so I mean the whole thought that you have to weigh the economic impact because economic impact has health impact. So you may have more people dying from economic impact than from corona, from COVID. And so I'm a public health person, of course I want to save lives and I also see the impact of if you don't do it and if everybody gets and the long term effects, I mean, so many things we don't know. But it's that basic dilemma which I think is so interesting when different countries are approaching it differently and I don't think we know the answer yet.

No, but it's also clear that probably it was right to be quite cautious in the beginning because of the high levels of ambiguity or information gaps. And it becomes easier over time as we learn.

Absolutely. And that's, not to quote anybody, but actually the Danish Prime Minister said that, you know, we don't know everything. We will make mistakes. I thought that was a good starting point and she says also the worst thing we could do is to wait. Yes, I totally agree with that. I'm just also, you know, obviously the whole world is in a crisis but we hopefully will know more so that we can slowly creep out of it.

Maybe a last question for you. So, we sit here, you're still as idealistic as you were when you started out and I think anybody who listens to this can hear the truth in that statement. Would you still pick the same path with what you know? Oh, yes. You still go to the same?

Again, because I think it is part of a life ideal, but also because it is eternally interesting. It keeps your brain going 24 hours a day. No, not quite, but yeah, whatever. And because you learn so much. I mean, the same things that I was saying before. You learn a lot about yourself, you learn a lot about other people and I think you deal with people and their motivations. Yeah, I don't see how it could be better.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.