from new york, zeynep tufekci is with us. e is a technosociologist who has written extensively about covid—19 and won plaudits, both for her analysis of the pandemic and for her work covering the technology giants. zeynep, it's good to see you. also with us is nick pickles, a senior director of public policy strategy and development at twitter. he is in colorado, usa. nick, good to see you. from geneva, we have margaret harris. she is a spokeswoman for the world health organization and has worked all over the world fighting pandemics, including ebola. margaret, good to see you. and from here in the uk, eliot higgins, founder of bellingcat, an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists. eliot, it's good to see you as well. welcome to you all. now, let's go to our first question. and this is from annetta in skopje, macedonia. she works in the air freight business. over to you. thank you for having me on this bbc panel. it's very nice to meet all of you. my question was how can gove

we are joined now by the author of that "atlantic" piece, zeynep tufekci, faculty associate at harvard's policy director. we lost zeynep but i want to start with something that she wrote that really was put on my radar by her piece. zeynep, are you there? can you hear us? we're having some problems with your connection. she's not there. we're going to try to get her up. dr. patel, she writes about taking the things that are, for lack of a better word, unknown to us, the real threat that the variants will have and holding them up in an equal manner for a public that has not gone to medical school, that are not scientists or epidemiologists, with what we do no which is that the vaccines are effective, they're saving lives and protecting against those variants. i think her broader point is there is a need for proportionality. >> yeah, nicole, and i read that article when it came out and it -- >> dr. patel. >> oh? >> can you hear us, dr. patel? >> i can hear you. >> okay. >> i don't think you can hear me. >> i can hear you now. dr. patel, can you weigh in on this point of sort of the -- the