Over the past year, the ISSP has published multiple member blogs about how we need to transform decision-making to more effectively address grand challenges, such as transforming teaching, training and the science enterprise; fostering equity, diversity and inclusion in decision-making; putting into practice new decision-making models, and reframing how we think about science and technology in domestic and international policy. The compilation also includes a dedicated section on the grand challenges of COVID-19 and climate change.
Over the past six months, the ISSP has published multiple member blogs providing concrete advice to decision-makers about the myriad impacts and dimensions of COVID-19 – everything from science advice and government responses, to data collection and modelling to the cultural dimensions of superspreader events, the future of air travel, and the impacts on human rights.
Advisory Council Member, ISSP, uOttawa
Guest Scholar, Centre de recherche en droit public, Université de Montréal
Former Deputy Minister of Health for Canada from 1993 to 1998
I would like to offer some reflections agreed upon on my experience as a former Deputy Minister of Health for Canada from 1993 to 1998. During this period, I experienced the Krever survey on contaminated blood, the redesign of the Canadian tobacco law, the aftermath of the Baird report on new reproductive technologies, the impact on Canada of a plague outbreak in India and Ebola in Nigeria.
The world has not known, in living memory, a pandemic on the scale of what we are experiencing with COVID-19. Nor has the world had access to data and analysis, much of it being generated rapidly and disseminated freely, on the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself. Navigating a path out of this crisis will require effective integration of this data into decision making.
Core Member and Lead of the ISSP Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Research Cluster
Assistant Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, uOttawa
We are all participating in an unprecedented global experiment aimed at figuring out what is the best way to confront the COVID-19 pandemic. And according to the latest data, one well-established strategy seems to be working; the messaging around social distancing seems to be motivating most Canadians in just the right way: we’re flattening the curve.
Up to the week prior to its publication, there was increasing public pressure for the federal and provincial governments to be more open about their projections of the COVID-19 epidemic curves, especially the numbers of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations, and how these trends were likely to affect hospital capacity including ICU beds and ventilators.
Writer in Residence, ISSP, uOttawa
Author and Performer
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic is the world’s most widespread and longest running case of shared public science and health communication. One lasting impact is that it will change science popularizing.
Viruses fly all the time, but rarely have they been as deadly as COVID-19, which will change aviation security as much as 9/11. The novel Coronavirus is changing our appreciation of risk; it has flipped the question of the global aviation sector from surge capacity to viability; and it demonstrates the levels of cultural shift and honest public discussion needed in Canada.
Disabled people know a lot about social isolation. Many – including those with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities – are relying on the success of COVID-19 containment strategies, and lives are indeed at risk if they are not taken seriously. However, public health measures that restrict visiting rights to those in institutional settings are putting many at risk in other ways.
Many governments, including Canada’s, have taken too long to recognize the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic when even days of delay can have large effects on the ultimate death toll. Our governments are only now recognizing that successfully flattening the epidemic curve means that we could be self-isolating for more than just a month or two.
Core Member and Science Advice Research Cluster Lead, ISSP
Full Professor at the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, Faculty of Arts, uOttawa
We all know the risk of crying wolf: if we do it too often then people will stop believing us. As a result, risk communicators must not cry wolf too often—but not too rarely either.
In troubling times, sound and timely science advice matters. It helps if you have trusted structures and institutions to rely on for such advice. Canada has been fortunate to have a public that largely trusts its knowledge and science actors.
The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISSP or its staff.
