simon clarke is associate professor in cellular microbiology at the university of reading welcome to the program then let me start with you today i want to talk 1st about the tokyo olympics why is the prime minister in japan insisting that the olympics will go on what are the potential financial costs and the political costs at play if the olympics were to be canceled. well 1st of all thank you for having me the potential costs of not holding the olympics as schedule look the significant surge and which has spent billions new infrastructure in terms of the news that he is preparing to receive tens of thousands of athletes coaches specials and of course fans this was supposed to be the centerpiece of what has been a massive effort over the last decade to really get the country's tourism infrastructure into gear to create these new sports facilities to modernize a lot of things so to not have the olympics happen it would be a significant blow to the economy and to the nation's morale gail as a former olympian i want to ask you about the effect that this is having on the athletes how is

of this really is going to change our lives let's speak with dr simon clarke microbiology professor reading university in the u.k. dr and former president of the international association of bioethics joining us from bhopal india welcome i'm not can we kick off with you on the california case do you think regulators were right to hold folks in nations with such a large bunch of modernity. thank you for having me so whenever you roll out these kinds of vaccine thing in pandemic situations you are dealing with the risk benefit calculus the risk is one of not knowing enough about the safety profile of the vaccines and perhaps sometimes even about there because the because you are taking in dedham data and making decisions and you know the benefit of actually helping then the spread of the pandemic now if you do those decisions in such an expedited manner then you also have to be very cautious about the possibility of any kind of adverse event happening when you have a monster all out and if that indeed is. if there is a safety signal of any kind it makes sense to stop and pause and try to find out if there is anything which is linked to the vaccine and if so what do you need to do about it whether that means special popu

where does welcome live on to the program simon clark simon is an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the university of reading in the u.k. simon always good to see you can the london minister use the covert situation as i'd have control in london hospitals are running out of capacity how dangerous is the situation as you see it. will it if the hospitals do run out of capacity and it looks like change short order they're going to do that there won't be nasty to treat it will you have heart attacks strokes perhaps you know involved in a road traffic accident or have come through some misfortune in some other way never mind the routine replacements the replacements cancer treatments that you would normally expect so that's the real danger we've touched in this before but i think it's more pertinent than ever are you surprised to be seeing such a rapid surge in coba deaths in spite of ever tightening restrictions are they working in other words. oh well i think it's too early to. say that given the. new strain which is moving fast of the most if not all of us expected certainly faster than i expected the numbers

of our visitors are welcomed to go there and read about it and learn about it. then we have this wonderful memorial that was built in the 1980s by -- designed by architects from howard universityn great partnership with mt. vernon, put together this really special memorial. at the time it was the only memorial to enslaved people in north america anywhere. so we're proud of that story. but somewhere in there and around there is where i would bet william lee is buried. >> time for maybe just one or two more questions. robert from annandale, virginia. good morning. thanks for waiting. >> caller: thank you very much for taking my call. my question isn't really about his presidency but your thoughts on his remarkable mother and his remarkable sister betty and her husband louis. and their influence on george. they were probably his longest female relationships, even including his wife, and i'd be interested in your thoughts. thank you. >> thank you very much. i didn't catch the third part of that question. he asked about george washington's mother and about his sister betty. i didn't hear the third part. but let me just say about the mother, you know, mary washington is really an ex