Lessons from COVID-19: we need long-term investment in research

As we head into this fall season, for most people lockdowns, and gathering restrictions seem a distant memory. We’re more at ease with the knowledge of how to manage COVID-19 and the availability of vaccines specific to circulating variants. However, we cannot take for granted our current sense of ease—and we must not be quick to forget the lessons we learned from the pandemic. One vital lesson is that our capacity to deal with emergencies includes having a strong, well-funded research infrastructure. COVID-19 showed us what long-term investment in research does for us, and how much we depend on university researchers to future-proof our country. The role of fundamental science contributing to the development of mRNA vaccines has been well described. Research in many diverse areas over many decades was necessary. For example, in the 1980s, Dr. Pieter Cullis and colleagues at the University of British Columbia were conducting work to understand the nature of lipids. Subsequently, lipid nanoparticles were developed and became the basis for protecting RNA for delivery into our bodies. No one could have foreseen such a distant application of the fundamental research being conducted 40 years ago. The many other ways our science and academic activity contributed to the pandemic response on a daily basis are less well described. Dr. Vivek Goel is president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo. Photograph courtesy of the University of Waterloo Governments across the country activated existing and new advisory groups, task forces, and committees to advise on the response, from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, to the Vaccine Task Force. Moreover, most of the individuals mobilized came from universities, research hospitals, and research institutes, and many other graduate students and post-doctoral fellows also pivoted their research activity in order to support the pandemic emergency response. In fact, a great many of our graduate students delayed their graduation or paused their studies to focus on supporting pandemic working groups, committees, or new research programs. A good example of the role of academic institutions in the direct response is the case of wastewater testing. For years, the potential of wastewater testing for public health surveillance was primarily restricted to research projects. As COVID-19 spread, researchers were able to demonstrate the utility of such testing to detect changes in community activity as fast as or faster than other indicators. Researchers and labs in many different areas—such as infectious disease, genomics, and sanitation—came together to provide this public service. It's not just the obvious areas of science that need funding to give us the resilience we need as a nation. We need investment across all disciplines. Humanities scholars and social scientists are also a critical part of future-proofing the country. Historians who had studied responses to the Spanish flu in 1918 helped to understand societal reactions to COVID. Psychologists and communications experts helped us understand the spread of misinformation and disinformation about vaccines. Sociologists and anthropologists helped to identify why some communities might be hesitant to accept vaccines or treatments. The lesson here is that nobody can predict what knowledge will become critical to helping us navigate our next challenges. Nor can they claim to know exactly in which disciplines we should invest our tax dollars to guarantee a return on our investment. To tackle these unknowns, we need sustained, long-term investment across the board in research, and particularly greater investment in our graduate students. In the pandemic, we got used to seeing the role of public health officers, health-care workers, statisticians, epidemiologists, and many others on a regular basis. Virtually all of these individuals were educated and prepared for their roles in university-based programs. If our educational programs are not adequately funded, where will our first responders come from in the next emergency? Who will be our innovators? And this isn’t a situation where we can just maintain the status quo. According to a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report, Canada is falling behind our peers in graduate student enrolments. Governments and the private sector need to step up and invest in research and innovation, and create opportunities for graduate students to succeed. In Canada, we have seen several successive federal budgets without any significant investments in science and research capacity. As a public health physician, I am seeing the same patterns with science investment that we have seen with public health. Every few years, such as after SARS, there is an investment in public health, which quickly wanes as the event is forgotten. The need for science investment seems to now be permanently forgotten. We don’t know what emergency is coming next. It could be another pandemic, or a cybersecurity threat, not to mention our ongoing challenges such as climate adaptation and the current housing crisis. We need broad investment in our science capacity to ensure we are prepared for the next major emergency—whatever it may be. Dr. Vivek Goel is president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo. The Hill Times