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- So in January of 2020,
I was teaching my fourth year medical virology course.
And I was aware that there was this new respiratory virus
that was infecting people in China
and spreading rather quickly.
And so, as a class, we would watch this red dot in China
get bigger and bigger
and then these new red dots were showing up
in all these other countries
and we kept asking, when is it gonna show up in Canada?
- I think my moment was when the virus jumped from China
to Iran and Italy in very short succession.
- I think the data became scary at the beginning of March
where certainly more countries started to become affected,
nothing was being done particularly aggressively
at that time.
And then the shutdown happened and it kind of became real.
- [Man] We've always said, there's a pandemic virus
out there.
It's going to happen again.
And we've seen examples and I think we got overconfident.
We had SARS that was controlled.
We had another Coronavirus, MERS,
Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, that was controlled.
And I think we've assumed that we can control things.
And we've realized that we can't.
- [Woman] The planning that needed to be done
before the disease came to our borders,
did not seem to be done.
- I think people realize now that any infectious disease
or emerging infectious disease can affect
any part of the world.
And also it can emerge from any type of species.
I mean, who would have thought that MERS
could be transmitted from bats to camels to people.
So you can't rule out any animal species
and you can't rule out the fact that it can affect
any part of the world.
- One Health, to me, is a collaborative approach
among multiple disciplines,
as well as other societal actors,
so community members,
potentially politicians, those in industries,
and essentially looking at complex or wicked problems
that occur at the intersection of human, animal
and environmental health.
- Zoonotic infections are a prime example
of the One Health concept.
We are destroying habitat,
and that means that humans and animals
are coming into closer contact.
The more you destroy the habitat,
the more likely you are to have this interaction.
And then, you know, again, it could transmit human to human.
- This pandemic's also showing how we need
this broad intersect or approach to infectious diseases.
It can't just be medicine and veterinary medicine,
and it can't just be science.
It has to be a social science, its behavior.
The bigger challenges we're dealing with now
are things like vaccine hesitancy.
- I understand vaccine hesitancy to stem from mistrust.
If we don't have buy-in from the public,
if they don't trust the product,
if they don't trust the policy makers and the providers,
then the best vaccines may never make it into people's arms.
We have a lot of access to media
and many of us have a lot of time to spend on the internet.
And we got to see the mess of science,
what it looks like before things are established,
before things are settled.
There will be people that say,
"You see the scientists don't know
what they're talking about".
When it might be the case that they are changing
their directives in light of new evidence.
And that's a sign of good science.
- I found the University of Guelph
to be extraordinarily collaborative,
a really a great environment to build relationships
and do work with other researchers
outside of your own discipline.
I think we also have a really unique combination
of expertise here.
We have the veterinary college and One Health
has really taken leadership out of the veterinary field.
We have, you know, the Agricultural College
strong biological sciences,
strong environmental focus,
and then really strong social science,
which is incredibly important when we think about
the entire One Health approach.
- Our research actually has expanded considerably
after we demonstrated that our vaccine platform
works against SARS-CoV-2.
This is actually kind of taking the One Health approach
and flipping on its side.
We're taking an animal pathogen
and turning it into a benign vaccine vector,
which can protect humans.
But interestingly, we can also use this vaccine
to vaccinate production animals.
- Optimizing this vaccine platform,
I first and foremost, feel grateful and honored
to be a part of this team.
The University of Guelph plays a significant role
in the prevention of the next pandemic.
Just incorporating or being a part of One Health
is the first step towards that.
- My work just deals with infectious diseases
and we're always on the lookout for something new.
We really focus on that interface
between humans and animals.
So we track current diseases,
we track what we think are emerging diseases
and we track things that are just unusual.
- I think my research can help us prepare
for the next pandemic in really providing more evidence
and continuing the conversation
on how important the environment and environmental health
and wildlife health are in preventing
any kind of disease event that we might see.
- Health requires this kind of broad perspective.
And there isn't one discipline or one researcher
that can bring in all the necessary perspectives
and all the necessary tools.
- I think if we reflect on the entire situation
with the pandemic and embrace a One Health approach
in our pandemic preparedness,
we can be prepared for the next one.
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