True Patriot Love

00:00:00.000 well it was only a couple of weeks ago now maybe four or five weeks actually that we had this

00:00:09.360 familiar face and growing more familiar all the time with us dr jeff wilson from novometrics is

00:00:14.640 joining us and dr jeff was kind enough to explain to us the last time about what's going on with

00:00:21.440 the avian flu and something that he calls outbreak response which is fascinating and endlessly

00:00:28.240 helpful if we were just to put it into play recently novometrics put up a couple of very

00:00:34.000 interesting white papers about what had occurred during the ostrich culling dr jeff how are you

00:00:40.160 i'm great thanks mike thanks for having me thanks for coming back i appreciate this you know i wanted

00:00:45.440 to follow up because i uh i'm no scientist i think you've gathered that by now um i'm barely a

00:00:52.000 broadcaster at that but one thing i did do was get fascinated with your last two white papers

00:00:57.920 uh that talked about the uh the response to the outbreak strategy that had occurred

00:01:02.800 with the ostrich culling in canada of course uh there was outcries uh from farmers and uh activists

00:01:11.120 uh alike uh saying that this was an overstep and your response to that was well we need outbreak

00:01:17.840 response what were your thoughts if you don't mind you were a little critical of the current

00:01:22.560 outbreak response model and said it was a little fragmented what do you mean explain that to us

00:01:27.520 yeah so um people who are listening may may have heard and talk about uh outbreak response best

00:01:37.520 practices so this is this is based on what's been known published on acted upon in for outbreaks of

00:01:45.520 things like e coli and legionnaires disease and that sort of thing for for a long time several several

00:01:51.920 decades um and uh it was it was devised originally for dealing with those kind of infectious disease

00:02:01.360 outbreaks generally relatively small ones um small in the sense of something like walkerton so obviously

00:02:10.320 a huge deal but small compared to something that we're seeing like with covid obviously or with avian

00:02:19.360 influenza birds so so it turns out there is uh outbreak response is simply the process of of uh if

00:02:29.520 you have an outbreak of something uh what do you do to manage that outbreak that's all it is and there

00:02:36.880 are best practices which are well established and um then there's other stuff which doesn't work very well

00:02:45.360 uh outbreak response is kind of like uh teaching i figure it's like everybody figures they know how to teach

00:02:55.680 and it's kind of like especially with covid people most of us said most people have never

00:03:01.840 even thought about outbreak response was kind of like everybody everybody suddenly had an opinion

00:03:07.600 right which is totally fine but if you have a serious problem you want to have a process that

00:03:14.960 actually works and is valued to work and so i i have a lot of experience and do that i'm not most

00:03:21.040 experienced in that in canada but i have a lot of experience and did as you know some helped in a big

00:03:27.840 way and things like walking and a bunch of outbreaks i think you guys took a lead role in

00:03:32.480 in making sure walkenden came under control yeah exactly we weren't the primary lead it was the

00:03:37.040 medical officer marine quigg but uh we played a big role our team did and um it turns out that uh

00:03:46.640 what happened so i learned this through a through a really quite a rigorous program through the

00:03:51.120 public health agency of canada a two-year internship where i got set out to outbreaks

00:03:56.240 and i learned a lot about how to to do this through first-hand experience and being mentored by people

00:04:02.080 who had done it it's a lot of it's very counterintuitive how we do it and uh so when covid happened

00:04:10.400 i started and asked by people well what should we do and so i ended up doing some speaking some writing

00:04:17.120 and we came up with this model it's not we didn't invent the model all sort of a name and a simplified

00:04:24.240 way to explain how do you do a great response so it's like been entire books you'll probably three

00:04:30.000 four page book written on how you do this so i i created a simplified version that we call the

00:04:34.960 pillars of outbreak response uh there's four pillars and basically it's like a lot of things there's four

00:04:41.600 pillars and then there's kind of sub pillars and sub things sub things right so it's like it's like

00:04:46.320 learning everything it's like baking a cake well it was the basics then there's like a million

00:04:50.160 some things to get to be at a massive kind of level and uh so we we did that and it really started to

00:04:58.560 resonate with people and um uh it works in any outbreak situation and and uh in in the saving

00:05:07.520 influenza stuff we just started talking about it amongst ourselves amongst you and then we started

00:05:13.600 implementing it uh this is kind of a long answer to your question um well no in a sense it's a great

00:05:21.040 setup because what you just told me was okay we have a system we have a response method there are

00:05:27.680 uh a set of procedures underneath each of the pillars we've established the pillars so now you

00:05:33.200 take a look at how things were handled in this most recent outbreak and it makes me say okay so where

00:05:38.720 did it fall apart so so i would say so with the with the ostrich outbreak you mean yeah yeah so yeah

00:05:48.080 so basically there's at universal ostrich farm there was outbreak of something there was there was a

00:05:55.840 year or so earlier there was a bunch of ostriches died of something uh and um uh that kind of set off

00:06:05.040 the the interest in a great response and uh uh but right from the get-go i would say all four pillars

00:06:17.440 which are kind of interrelated when you hear them none of them it got off on the wrong foot and and

00:06:23.440 none of them were done properly and so they all ended up bringing the whole thing down so so to start

00:06:29.760 with what are the four pillars tell me those so the four pillars are number one build build the

00:06:36.240 right leadership team build a proper leadership team number two is collect the right data and

00:06:41.840 information it's unbelievably obvious and you kind of go you have to kind of see how it plays out and

00:06:48.720 why it's so important and why it works why it doesn't work it's not being done the third one is

00:06:53.360 then once you start getting information like what is likely causing this outbreak through things like

00:07:01.440 proper testing then you can start thinking about interventions so interventions are things you do

00:07:08.480 to stop the outbreak so this can range from anything from do nothing which was probably the right thing in

00:07:15.600 this situation to kill everything at the other extreme which is probably not the right thing to do so

00:07:24.720 so you what you do is you you come up with interventions with the right leadership team

00:07:30.960 that has people who actually have experience with actually running outbreak response

00:07:37.440 and and who have information from a wide variety of different sources so people like steve pelic who

00:07:47.760 has an incredible understanding of immunology it's really important to get those kind of people

00:07:53.920 involved in the leadership team people like me who've actually done outbreak response not just

00:08:00.480 stamp right out but actually getting those kind of people involved is extremely important

00:08:07.440 uh and building a transparent leadership team where you're sharing information and talking like

00:08:12.880 we're talking now right with people from outside of the core in this case from cfia because if you

00:08:20.320 just start with the core of cfia you're talking about a bunch of you know generally nice people for the most

00:08:29.760 part as nice as anybody else well-meaning um some of them with some skills but they don't have all the

00:08:36.640 skills and they're not independent and they have tremendous pressure on them to come up with answers

00:08:44.960 that are aligned with stamping out and they don't know how to do stuff other than stamping out so

00:08:50.720 they don't know how to select a proper leadership team or they are impeded in inhibited doing so or they

00:08:58.080 don't know how to collect the right data like actually testing the ostriches so if you don't have the right leadership team 0.98

00:09:04.960 everything goes off kilter you get people saying let's not test the ostriches let's um let's just kill them all right

00:09:14.960 and then the and the and the final one is proper communication so uh with respect to the public

00:09:22.240 telling the public what's actually going on well that was one of the points i had like between

00:09:29.200 between data and uh communication uh building the right team seems to lend itself nicely to

00:09:35.760 transparency transparency lends itself to solutions i think that's it it's really what it is is so anyone

00:09:42.640 who's uh worked you know in a um corporate role or senior government role anybody who's studied leadership

00:09:50.560 this is just straight leadership one-on-one building a leadership unit straight get the right people set

00:09:57.200 the tone set the objective the objective is we're going to actually solve this thing properly with

00:10:02.960 the least amount of unintended consequences we're going to get the right feeling over the doing we're

00:10:08.560 going to build an environment of trust so we can share information we're going to build a team a

00:10:14.640 leadership team that includes people from the outside and when you do that the probability of resolving

00:10:22.960 the thing goes way way up because pretty soon you start collecting the right data like getting

00:10:26.960 the right testing then you do the interventions based on what the data says not based on some

00:10:34.400 other thing which could be uh what you always did before or what you think the minister wants you to

00:10:40.240 do or whatever right so so um hopefully honest with you jeff that's going to take too long and we just 0.96

00:10:47.280 we should probably just kill the ostriches actually well now i think the human response to outbreak 0.75

00:10:52.640 response is we have an outbreak i mean that the i don't know i think part of what makes uh professionals 0.97

00:10:59.520 like yourself uh the obvious leads in these scenarios is you don't get into a panic your first reaction

00:11:07.200 is to put into action a formula that has already been thought through

00:11:12.960 and actually as part of the leadership process and the leader the leadership team dealing with other

00:11:23.760 people who are doing things like handling ostriches or getting samples extremely important that the

00:11:29.920 leadership team have actual practical experience and a personality to remain calm in a crisis not not

00:11:38.960 lackadaisical just calm so that they can actually think and calm everybody else down but it's basically

00:11:48.160 basic basic kind of crisis management there's psychology to it i was going to say the psychology

00:11:53.680 around this should be better communicated we have a viable team we have several processes in place now

00:12:02.960 the the community is going to react better to that than oh my god we had to kill a bunch of

00:12:06.960 ostriches because there's a flu about to kill us all is a very bad place to begin right and we can't

00:12:12.240 tell you and then what happens out is a bunch of talking points which most people look at or many

00:12:19.600 people look at this and go that just sounds like government pr yeah and then the trust level just goes

00:12:26.320 and then it just escalates into or you know escalates down to a worse and worse response

00:12:32.640 one of the things your white paper uh came out with was uh you kind of criticized the lack of

00:12:38.160 testing and biohazard protocols which sounds to me like it these are items that fall outside the

00:12:44.000 pillars because they weren't properly maybe digested or handled or whatever the case is to make sure that

00:12:51.200 there was a process in place biohazards i would imagine and the protocols associated with those would 1.00

00:12:57.040 impact the test results yeah and so the and the the biohazard management is kind of a it's a subset of

00:13:06.640 the leadership of the data and the response and the communication right and so it's an important part of

00:13:13.120 it um uh you want to make sure that that that the possibility of other people animals getting

00:13:24.240 infected is reduced right yeah and so uh so um it it's it's really important what happened with it in in a

00:13:36.160 more rational approach which we've been put forward and we're not alone um bio the biohazard would have

00:13:45.680 been dealt with largely by saying okay it looks based on the data with a proper leadership team is calm and

00:13:53.680 informed and unbiased and knowledgeable they like they would say um that we're um uh this thing is

00:14:04.240 they probably aren't shedding avian influenza let's test them yeah it probably would have come back

00:14:11.920 negative so it would have calmed things down more and then people would have said okay let's put on

00:14:17.440 a few more layers of bio of quarantine and biohazard control without going without panicking or

00:14:25.920 or just you know doing things that are necessary and uh and that's how the biohazard piece would

00:14:34.000 imagine what happened with this one is the whole leaders team never got on to that it that it probably

00:14:43.200 they probably weren't infected or that we should just accept that they're not infected we should not 0.99

00:14:49.920 test because it might show that they're not infected and then and then we should kill all these ostriches 1.00

00:14:58.080 and then and then we have to get rid of them somewhere in secret so we need to transport them

00:15:04.960 somewhere where where we can dispose of them and um no the whole the whole thing the whole thing reads

00:15:14.080 uh like a mishap and that's that's just totally well this is why i think these papers are important and

00:15:20.480 i'll make sure that there's a link to them in here so that you know canadians can read uh your response to

00:15:25.840 this because the response that you put out there was really i think what the average person wants

00:15:31.120 to hear okay we have a pause a policy we have a process uh you know the the human health risk

00:15:37.520 becomes reduced immediately because we're going through these protocols biohazard isn't a problem

00:15:43.280 the other thing is the communication face on this thing was so bad as you point out we're killing

00:15:48.640 ostriches and hiding them is not a good place to begin an outbreak response the public becomes suspicious

00:15:55.120 there's outcries about the the uh the cruelty to animals the farmers have lost uh you know so much

00:16:01.440 money in the process and and uh you know the livelihoods uh put in jeopardy thank goodness

00:16:07.840 in a sense that that became part of the spotlight because it puts a spotlight on what really needs

00:16:13.040 to be done which is in many cases for many things in this country and i think you've heard me say this

00:16:17.840 before jeff we really do have a scenario where outbreak response could be applied hand over fist

00:16:27.120 in many scenarios whether it was uh homelessness totally you know uh serious drug use on the streets

00:16:36.720 mental health issues uh you know so many of these uh major issues that we have could have these four

00:16:44.160 pillars with the right team at the top having a look down how what what is the message we could take

00:16:49.280 to the government that says you really have to build outbreak response into your planning for safety

00:16:55.680 governance and and and moving you know the country forward in all of these categories

00:17:00.720 well i think it would probably be something like um look uh if i was in your shoes and i was like a mayor

00:17:12.960 or uh you know provincial person involved in homelessness or whatever we've got we've got some

00:17:19.920 serious problems right and and never mind that they're hurting people you mr permanent person or

00:17:28.880 mrs government or or politician these are hurting you like like i would i would actually start to appeal

00:17:36.000 to their own self-interest right and going you you this is not working for you the way we're doing it we

00:17:44.000 do this properly you're going to end up being heroes because you're the first people to actually use the

00:17:53.280 proper process to act and you will step by step get successes right there'll be a bit of trial and error

00:18:01.840 and then it's going to work better you'll do things like homelessness and wealth you'll start talking to

00:18:08.880 actual other people who have managed this in other parts of the world and you're going to get ideas from

00:18:13.440 them and you're going to get up in a in an upward spiral and that if you're a politician that's going

00:18:18.960 to improve votes for you right it's it's going to make your mental health a lot better for you as a

00:18:26.320 person in whatever role that's honestly kind of the wow that's a great response if you want your

00:18:33.760 job to be easier if you want to do better things for your constituents start to get your head around

00:18:39.360 this kind of modeling this kind of preparation because it sounds to me also now jeff correct me

00:18:45.040 if i'm wrong an outbreak is not the time to call jeff you should probably have an outbreak response

00:18:52.000 in your in your field in your industry uh in in the medical field and at the government levels

00:18:58.000 totally this should be built now in advance of the problem it's way better and and we call it the

00:19:04.640 pillars of outbreak response partly because that's where we start everybody it's easy to get people's

00:19:10.240 attention about outbreaks because they're so obvious right and so that's where we started but the

00:19:15.680 same process it's really just a coherent group problem solving process so so yeah so if we want

00:19:25.680 say we have a a new thing in our community that we're just wondering hey could this turn into a bad

00:19:32.000 thing right maybe it's brand new um the the thing to then is to get people together and go okay guess

00:19:39.840 what we need leadership team data any interventions required maybe not maybe it's a little tweaking

00:19:48.560 communications same process and what will happen is it'll save money it'll it'll you know it's some

00:19:56.480 series it could save lives and it works across every function within government uh at every level

00:20:06.400 and and the more you work on it the more it integrates people just get on uh they got a virtuous

00:20:12.240 cycle and and start working together it starts to get fun because we're having success and getting

00:20:17.200 along and not having to hide you know what jeff i hope there's an outbreak of common sense and then

00:20:23.200 this gets put into play at every level of government and uh in every industry certainly the ones that

00:20:29.120 service us feeding ourselves uh certainly the ones that watch over our agriculture and our safety uh and

00:20:36.000 our health so uh look i will encourage people to have a look at at these um you know white papers that

00:20:42.960 you've put up uh novometrics where can people find out more and download these i think they're right

00:20:47.760 on your site are they not yeah and i'll tell you things are moving pretty fast um i'm not

00:20:52.960 sure what's the next thing going up on our website you can put that there and then and people are

00:20:57.760 welcome to email me and give them my email address and uh i was gonna say there's there's one other

00:21:04.800 thing i was gonna i was gonna say but it just you wanted you wanted to place me on your advisory team

00:21:11.200 oh hey i had a question for you before we get out of here by the way yeah was there uh was there ever

00:21:17.760 a role for vaccination associated with uh the the bird flu and canadian poultry was that something

00:21:24.400 that was considered at some point yeah and it still is being considered okay and so um so the way i look

00:21:32.240 at this is this and this is a classic outbreak response thing if you're on an outbreak you're on an

00:21:38.960 outbreak team a leadership what you try to avoid is at the outset going hey guys should we vaccinate or

00:21:48.880 not right so it's it's like okay we got an outbreak okay should we vaccinate should we vaccinate it it's

00:21:54.560 not the time and why now it's not that it's not important and then that it might not even work it's

00:22:00.160 that you need a bit of time to normalize the relationship so that some people might be extremely

00:22:06.800 pro-vaccine some not so you have to kind of not you have to get some common ground and then you have

00:22:12.720 to get some actual information that everybody can agree on right like so we're going to do vaccine we're

00:22:20.080 going to want to know do we actually have a problem uh would these vaccines actually work would they be

00:22:28.400 cost effective are there any adverse events are there actual better ways we could do this than the

00:22:35.760 vaccine right or maybe the vaccine could be integrated sorry as as part of a process maybe

00:22:45.440 just for some chickens or some whatever right okay so so it's very important to do that otherwise you

00:22:52.800 just get on a momentum of some people and then it's become becomes who's who can yell the loudest

00:23:01.360 who can manipulate who can lobby the best right not what's the best process so now with with vaccines

00:23:09.600 uh and i'm not an expert in these vaccines but i can tell you definitely um there are there are

00:23:18.080 certainly concerns even even from an adoption perspective amongst the public some of these

00:23:24.960 vaccines are mrna vaccines well that's what we went through with kobe right they they've still never

00:23:32.000 had the proper um on the human side never had proper uh i mean it's hard it's yeah it's hard to

00:23:41.760 understand efficacy of these things because it's so recent and it happens so quickly right so exactly we

00:23:47.200 still don't really know so i i'd kind of go listen i think it's a it's a great thing to consider but

00:23:53.280 let's now get the right people together and not take forever look this through and go there's some

00:23:58.400 near-term things we can do and um the other thing is with poultry vaccines is that typically uh and there

00:24:06.800 may be exceptions i'm not aware but typically it's a problem because once you start vaccinating

00:24:11.360 for a certain disease like that in canada it limits your ability to export poultry products or eggs or

00:24:20.400 what have you overseas because they get tested and a lot of these vaccines will come up as positive so

00:24:26.720 you can't tell is it a vaccinated bird or an infected bird so there's all that stuff has to be kind of

00:24:32.880 figured out right so that's a very interesting that's almost a devastating moment okay we've we've done

00:24:39.280 everything we need to do on our end but they're testing badly as we export them and suddenly

00:24:43.680 are are the market for this product is gone well this and i'm in all honesty i'm not i'm i'm not an

00:24:50.560 expert i have a fair degree of knowledgeable i'm definitely not i'm the guy who has the expertise

00:24:56.320 saying okay these are the different people we have to have around the table on the leadership team or as

00:25:03.440 advisors to the leadership team so we can make an intelligent decision and not go off a

00:25:09.120 cliff and of course that's a lot of what happened with coven i know that may trigger some people

00:25:13.760 because of it's just a very personal thing but that's that's a lot what happened we didn't have

00:25:19.840 we didn't have a broad leadership team there was the data was totally fragmented there was only of

00:25:24.400 the interventions a lot of them actually made they weren't aligned with the day because there was no

00:25:29.600 data and then the communications often that will default to different people pushing their own form of

00:25:39.120 propaganda or their own narrative on all the different sides it doesn't

00:25:44.800 jeff at dinner parties what do you say to people who argue this and they say decentralization is a

00:25:51.840 better way to go because you know once you centralize it then there's control over the masses

00:25:57.120 on this by this uh what's your argument to that now you got to bear in mind we're at the dinner party

00:26:03.200 we've both had a couple of drinks we've shoved each other around a little bit already

00:26:07.200 and i ask you this question what's your response well so one my my first response now is i i will

00:26:15.120 often say nothing just so you know because it's not necessarily the best environment right but if i feel

00:26:22.080 that that um you know there's a possibility of of talking about it without you know triggering me or

00:26:30.240 other people or what have you my general thing would be because i like it's not like i'm immune

00:26:35.600 to this right i have my own perspective right and so um uh generally just a second here now so your

00:26:43.360 thing is if we uh oh yeah centralization or not so here's here's okay it's one of these things where

00:26:52.960 it's not either or it's uh it's not either centralized or distributed it isn't an either or

00:27:02.560 thing when it's looked at in the best way okay so so what could that actually mean what we're proposing

00:27:12.480 is we need to bring together the distributed network of interested people across canada to be

00:27:22.160 part of the solution and be involved in adoption so that means doctors chicken farmers you know

00:27:29.200 homemakers what have you they have to be part of the thing that's a question of a distributed network

00:27:36.720 left to its own it can be utterly chaotic because there's no decision making process so then what you

00:27:42.880 need to do is have a centralized process that everybody can see and can buy into and draws a leadership

00:27:51.760 from amongst the different constituencies from people who are trustworthy and want to make a

00:27:58.480 difference you bring that together and then they can manage the issue with continual communication to

00:28:07.520 the public and experts it's not either or you know dr jeff i don't know if you realized you were a diplomat

00:28:15.280 that was very nicely handled but it makes sense but it's actually it's actually sorry go ahead

00:28:20.800 it makes perfect sense that that's the truth i mean yes i mean these are the experts that you want

00:28:25.200 at the top of the pillar number one you want the right people in the industry with the right knowledge

00:28:30.880 and uh connectivity to other people with knowledge on that same thing by the way i will never challenge

00:28:37.200 i will never challenge you on this at a dinner party i promise and i tried it pretty much now people

00:28:41.760 we're pretty well resigned a lot of us most people in the world are kind of like we certainly we're

00:28:45.840 not top really i'm not going to politic we're not going to talk over we're not talking outbreak

00:28:51.120 response honey i don't want you bringing up outbreak response with the dinner guest tonight

00:28:56.560 but but there is a way to do it right um i would say this thing about your or see i got i wrote a book

00:29:02.400 on belief systems years ago because i was trying to sort out how to deal with all the stuff so i can go

00:29:08.160 crazy so there's lots of things which are not either or so i remember a friend one time and it was

00:29:14.640 it was oh my husband's moving to to um ottawa from guelph and i have to decide either will i will i

00:29:25.040 change my job and give up my job here and move there or will i stay and then not only see my husband

00:29:31.360 on weekends see that thing which is not nicely amenable to either or it'll tie you in knots much

00:29:39.360 better is a is a integrated thing where you go the creative thing well what if you what if you had the

00:29:46.160 same job and you could tell the work and then you were able to have the best of both worlds right

00:29:53.520 it's it's actually just creative problems and that's a huge chunk of what

00:29:58.960 what outbreak response is about are we going to use vaccines or not well maybe we'll get started

00:30:05.600 and maybe there's a place we could use them or maybe there's something better facts maybe they're

00:30:09.760 the best possible thing if you have the that makes you have a if you have a a policy and a procedure of

00:30:16.640 discussion that actually leads to the so look we're all headed to the same solution but we have to do it

00:30:23.760 methodically we have to do it with as much knowledge as we can yeah uh listen this is uh i'll make sure

00:30:30.320 that your email is connected and we'll connect everybody in the description to these white papers

00:30:36.400 dr jeff this is not the last time i'll bug you in this new year happy new year thanks so much for

00:30:41.200 joining us not at all and again just people i know that i i kind of laugh about this stuff obviously

00:30:48.800 it's not so i take it very seriously it's just it's not that i'm nervous about talking about it

00:30:55.840 i just find intuitively it's helpful to kind of not get angry about it and not get one side and and a

00:31:05.920 little bit of silly humor as long as respectful to me helps me if nobody else so i just find people

00:31:13.600 it's not that i don't take it seriously look i gotta tell you if if i took everything we did every day

00:31:19.360 here seriously i would not come in in the morning most of this stuff is discussion and i love having

00:31:25.680 them with you because it it's a calming effect uh you realize pretty quickly that common sense is what

00:31:32.000 needs to reign over in these scenarios and that there's a methodology we can use uh by the way and

00:31:38.320 i say this often to be critical of what's happened before is making it better uh the next time today's

00:31:44.560 wardrobe seeing it in the camera right now is a good example of that i promise you won't see this

00:31:48.960 combination again jeff thank you so much i'm going to encourage people to reach out and get this info

00:31:54.560 from novometrics and uh uh if you don't mind we'll catch up again shortly i would love to thanks appreciate

00:32:00.800 it thank you

Why Canada’s Outbreak Response Failed

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