Welcome to another show of Celebrate Life. My name is Gary DeCarlas, and I am your host. The show is, again, all about celebrating the lives of people in our community. Some are well-known, others not so much. But we know that everybody has a story to tell. Over the years, I've seen too many obituaries and wished, boy, I wish I could have met that person. Well, this show is all about meeting us while we're still very much alive and well. And welcome to the show. If any of you would be interested in being interviewed yourself, please write me at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com. Or if you have questions or comments about our guests, again, write me at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com. And I'll make sure the guests get to see them. Today, I want to welcome a good friend and guest, John Franco. Also, an Adva Giant fan like myself. Good to have you on the show, John. What a curse, but yes. Thank you. So, we're here to celebrate your life, John. Okay. So, where would you like to start? Well, you have the con, so you ask the questions. Okay. Well, where did you grow up? I am a native remuner. I grew up, I was born and raised in Barrie. I lived indexing in Barrie Town outside of Barrie City. I had a, my parents built a house. It was one of the first subdivisions in that part of Barrie Town. And so we were kind of surrounded by farms on each side. We had a sugar shack in the back, an apple orchard in the back, a sugar bush up the end of the street in a farmer's field in the front of our house. When we used to go skiing on the farmers, one farmer, Mr. Bassett, had a hill and we'd go skiing there. Those are the good news, the bad news is that if you didn't stop, it was a barbed wire fence at the bottom of the hill. So, yeah, it was very rural. I mean, the grade school I went to was a four-room schoolhouse that had two grades in each one, and we did not have a telephone. Wow. Yeah, we didn't have a telephone. During the Kennedy assassination, one of the neighbors ran over to tell, we did have a TV, so let's turn on the TV, the president's been shot. But yeah. Do you have siblings? Yeah, my sister passed away four years ago. She was a year and a half older than me. Okay, I'm sorry about that. And what did your folks do for work? Oh, gosh, my father had a small auto dealership in Barrie that was started by his father. My mother was politically active and when my sister and I were old enough to sort of not require child care, she worked, she got elected to the state legislature in 19- and it's actually the state senate in 1964. Lost her seat and reapportionment in 1965 and then served another two or three terms in the late 60s and early 70s. This was during the Phil Hoff era, so politics was always there. And she worked for the secretary of state's office for a while, then became a realtor. Wow, where do you think she got that political instinct? From her parents. Parents were big Roosevelt Democrats, yeah. Interesting, wow. And my grandmother was really quite, my her mother was quite a, you know, didn't think about it at the time, but she was a career woman. She got a civil service appointment by president Roosevelt to head up a small post office in East Barrie, Vermont, which was very fortuitous because my grandfather became disabled as a result of a farm accident that he suffered earlier in life and he had really debilitating arthritis in his hips. So she supported the family and they put both my mother and my aunt through college. They were the first members of the family to go to college.  Imagine that in 1940s that she had stage four breast cancer and survived. She used to say the rosary a lot and now I know why. Oh my goodness, yeah. She was a dynamo. She was a dynamo, yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't really, you know, I often wish I could go back in time and talk to my grandparents, particularly as an adult and kind of, you know, share their experiences because particularly my mother's mother's life was really quite remarkable and what she does as a woman was not, she was way ahead of her time by 20 or 30 years was not really appreciated, you know. So they lived close by you? Oh yeah, they lived, my mother also grew up in Barrie Town. They lived in East Barrie. My father's parents lived in Barrie City. My grandfather was an immigrant. He came to the United States when he was 17. He was from Torino, Italy. And was he a stone cutter? No, he was a tour de France racer. I think he got a draft notice. He told me this one night. And he rode his bicycle to France and hopped the freighter, worked in the hotels in New York as a baker and a cook for 10 years and then got into auto mechanics because it was high-tech and sexy. Spent a while in Paterson, New Jersey and came to Barrie, Vermont because it had an Italian community. Started a small service station and he kind of grew that into a small, small auto dealership that sold student bakers, dodgers and Mercedes Benz. My goodness. And had Maria Vantrap as a client. Leaving her. So it sounds like life was, well, very family-oriented for sure as a child. Yeah, you know, Barrie was very, you know, when they say it takes a village, the neighborhood I grew up with was kind of in a rural area, but it was a little bit suburban. And the, you know, when we were like five or six, we would just go out in the neighborhood and play. And sort of all the mothers knew where the swarm of kids was. We had a school sort of in the center of the neighborhood where everybody congregated. And, you know, even like during the summer, that's where everybody would go. Like we would have baseball games that were co-ed and things like that. So I mentioned in your questionnaire, there were in particular four mothers who really kind of stood out as being the, you know, the village keepers. And back in the mid-1980s, I started to send them Christmas cards, you know, thanking them for, you know, for what they did. And one Bev Wilmot lives in Williamstown who just turned 99 and is still alive, a shout out to Bev. And I still send her a Christmas card every year and she sends me one. Oh, that's wonderful.  Yeah. So having grown up in Vermont and being a Vermonter, are those friendships that you started early on in your life, have they continued? Aquaintance is, yeah, particularly for a few people that I went to high school with, we still remain fairly close. A couple of my classmates have since passed away, but, you know, the best reunions we used to have was in my high school reunions and we would have one every five years. So I still keep in contact with them, yeah. When you were young, John, what were some of your, like, when I grow up, I want to be a blah, blah, blah? Well, my grandfather started this auto dealership and my father bought it out in the early 60s. You know, it was a lot of work because you were selling cars, you were working nights and weekends, even on Sundays. I remember they finally passed the blue law that prohibited auto sales on Sunday and it was a godsend for our family because my father otherwise couldn't be home on Sundays. So anyway, my mother lectured me quite early in life that I was not going into the car business like my father and she really was the one that kind of pushed me to go to law school, but that was really kind of what I wanted to do. That was my calling, as we say. So, yeah, no, she said, you're not going into the car business like your father. And I said, don't worry, I'm not going into the car. It just wasn't my cup of tea at all, just not at all. But the law and the use of language, that seemed to capture your... That was from my mother's side. I mean, she was, my mother really loved history. She read a lot of history. She loved to travel a lot. She was really particularly enamored in British history and she was involved in politics. So, I mean, that's where that came from. Yeah, absolutely. My father, not so much, but I think he kind of tolerated it. Okay, what was high school like for you? How big was high school? Oh, gosh, how big was Spalding at the time? Maybe 1,000, 1,200 students? We had, at that time, Spalding High School was a part of the very city of Barrie. I lived in Barrie Town, so they used to tuition us in. There were a number of other students, like from Berlin and Williamstown and surrounding areas, it also went there. But, so we had about, I think it was about, I think our each class was about 300 students. Did you hold any offices? Did you sports clubs? I tried football for a while, didn't like it. Was on the ski team for a couple of years and then the last two years we couldn't find a coach. But I like that. That was really, our ski coach was, he was an undergraduate Norwich cadet and he was into military training. Let me tell you, I thought football was hard going out for ski team was unbelievable. It was like, holy cow, it's like the Long March, you know, it was like, wow. I mean, and I was in, when I was a sophomore in high school, I was in incredible aerobic shape. I mean, unbelievable. And also I had to be because my Alpine skiing technique wasn't that good. So in order to make the team, I had to agree to do the cross country and the jumping. So cross country skiing and I would race Alpine a little bit if they had an extra slot. But I was in really good condition. But what they're really, really the training he put us through was a real, I think that really was an important lesson for me about our perseverance. And I mean, it was hard. It was hard. And to my, to this day, because of all that aerobic training, I still have low blood pressure. I swear to God, don't worry. All those arteries really got expanded out from all that running, you know? I mean, we would run on the railroad tracks. Berry City used to have a ski area in downtown Berry right across from the sewer plant. Yeah, a skyline skiways that had a pommelift. So we would run down there and he would make us run down there, which was three or four miles from the high school along the railroad tracks.  So you needless to say, it was pretty grueling. Did all that conditioning pay off? Were you guys good? No. It was pretty, it was pretty startup. I remember they had one Montpelier High School that hosted a meet and they used to have a little 20 meter jump up at Hubbard Park in Montpelier. But the problem is the runout of the ski jump went across the access road. So it's sort of like kids that are playing, you know, a basketball. They go car. It would be like, get away from the car to pass before the next jumper comes because you had to go across the road. Yeah, that was fun. I really, that was really, I love, I love, I love that period of time. And it was really when they say when you're working on a team like that and they get people kind of from different, you know, different.  That's really important. Yeah. Sounds like it was great. Yep. Good for you.  We've talked many of these talks over the years. Yeah. Why did that come from? Well, it came from because the NFL had a regional feed and Channel 3 had the Giants all the time and that was what was on. But I remember it was about when I was about in the sixth grade. I really, I would say I really fell in love in the sixth grade. And it was YA Tittle and the Giants and it was just, it was magic. My father took me to a game in Yankee Stadium in 1963, which was probably the high point of my relationship with him. It was just magic. Being a kid from Berry, Vermont and sitting there and looking at the freeze in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium. It was like, whoa, whoa. You know, and see YA Tittle in person playing football and Sam Huff and it was great. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. And then there were the lean years from them until the Lawrence Taylor Rear in the 1980s. It was like Joe Pasarczyk, which is the low point of all Giants history. We won't talk about that. And then there was the helmet catch during the Super Bowl in 2008, which was better. That was better. That was the high point. And I just saw that that was rated the number, the fourth best Super Bowl ever. Absolutely. Yeah. They pulled Giants fans. What was the worst moment in Giants history? What was the best? The Pasarczyk Fumble was the worst. The helmet catch was the best. Okay. So then you go to college. Where did you go to school? UVM. Okay. AKA Camp Catamount. Big city. Yeah. A lot of, you know, a lot of kids from Spalding, from Vermont went to UVM. It was really pretty affordable. My sister was 18 months older than me, but she was one grade ahead of me. So she was at UVM at the same time. Comparatively affordable. I remember it cost a tuition women board for each of us was $500 a semester. Wow. So that's great. So, you know, no student debt when I came out of undergraduate, which was really important. My, you know, my parents did save up for it. So they were able to do that. What was your major? I had ended up with a double major in political science and history. And if I didn't go, if I didn't play hooky my last semester and go skiing at Stowe all the time, I would have also had an English major. But I had this three day a week schedule. So it was anyway. Okay. And did you go right onto law school, right from undergrad? I had applied and it was, it was really hard to get into law school then because law school became very, very attractive. A lot of people wanted to go. And I was on a number of waiting lists and I finally got into, you know, it was like middle of October from the University of San Diego says, if you hop in your car right now you have a position and I just went, I wasn't interested. Long story short, Vermont law school started up and I got admitted very early to go there in 1975. So that's where I ended up going and had three other people from Barry and we commuted down one year and I rented a farmhouse with three other friends for the next two years down there, lived in Sharon outside of Royalton. So it was interesting living in Sharon, Vermont where if you went to the grocery store you had to go to the purity supreme in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. So buying a loaf of bread was literally an act of interstate commerce. Did law school challenge you, John? It did. It took me a while to get it. Once I got it, it wasn't terribly hard. I, my second year in law school, I took two months off to run for lieutenant governor and the Liberty union ticket with Bernie Sanders. He ran for governor and they had a three, Bernie was great. They had a three cut policy. They said, if you cut three classes, you're out. And I said, Bernie, they have a three cut policy. They're going to kick me out.  They didn't say a word. Is that where you met him? No, I, I was, I was, wanted to talk about a change moment in your life. I had got out of UVM. I graduated in 1974. And about that June, Liberty union had their statewide convention down here on, it was in a cafeteria, one of the churches on Wunewski Avenue, South Wunewski Avenue. And Bernie was there. And I had seen Bernie had been on TV. So I decided to go. I was looking kind of for an outlet for politics after being in college. And I mean, Bernie was, this is in 1974. Bernie was just really incredibly, you know, he was an incredible speaker. He was an incredibly charismatic. I mean, he had a really way of not speaking gibberish in terms of left-link politics, but speaking from the heart. And that was, you want to talk about a moment in your life where that changed, that definitely changed. So I became involved in Bernie with Bernie. We were doing some things like the U.S. Senate had written this report about disclosing all this corporate ownership in the United States.  So when Bernie was running for governor at that, governor of Senate, I forgot what it was in 74. And we would have these press conferences that we would expose this stuff using this U.S. Senate study. I remember coming up here, I was working at a paint store in Barrie. And we would, I would drive up and Bernie lived on off of Maple Avenue in a Duplex. And we would, you know, we'd plot out this press conferences and stuff and it was great. Otherwise I would have gone crazy working at the paint store, but that was a start. And then I ran for, I ran for actually state Senate Washington County that year. And then I ran for lieutenant governor in 76, also in Liberty Union. So Liberty Union still, even though it's now got a new name, the funk still has a warm place in my heart. All right, absolutely. And then, so at some point you moved to Burlington. Well, I moved to Burlington when I went to UVM and I kind of was here back and forth for a period of time after that, even when I was in law school. I would sublet an apartment here in Burlington because this is where both times I got summer jobs and also I had friends up here. Did not want to stay in Central Vermont. I didn't really, by that time I didn't really have any, all the friends I had had in high school had moved on. So, so yeah. And then I actually, after law school, I got a job as a public defender in Burlington. So my only other time after, basically after college and being in law school that I didn't live in Burlington was a stent for in 1991. I went with Bernie down in Washington and went this first year and he was in Congress. Didn't like the city and moved back to Vermont. What were your, the years when you did work for Bernie as the city attorney? That was like, that covered a lot of territory. It covered, Bernie was elected in 1981. They stonewalled his appointments. You and a number of other people got elected on the city council. You had five out of 13 and that, the way the charter worked, that gave him a particular amount of power. Anyway, finally the city council, at that time they called it the Board of Alderman, allowed him appointments. So I was appointed as an assistant city attorney at that time. Greatest job I ever had. Great, absolutely no question. And then a little bit through Peter when Peter was mayor from 89 and through to early 91.  We had four cases in the US Supreme Court at the time. We did things like tax reform in the public trust doctrine in the waterfront. And it was just, it was a great time. It was the best legal job I've ever had, bar none, bar none. I mean, I go to get together with people and I just say Bernie had to get together a couple of years ago when I was running into Joe McNeil and I just said, you know, there's just, it was never, professionally, never a better time. And we were young and we were full of it. And you know, it was like, you know. And intellectually it was challenging you. I mean, it was pushing all the buttons.  I used to call them the Monday night fights. You know, it was like, oh yeah, it was, we were not only up against the city council majority, we were up against state legislature, up against the governor. The whole edifice of the ruling class was against us. Yeah, yeah. You know, we were really just the beachhead here. But you shot, you really shined through that. I mean, I think. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad it was, that you saw it as a great time for you too, because we certainly. Oh, yeah. I mean, there was nothing, you know, you try to, you know, they say, what do you do after when you have an experience like that and you're fairly young and it's really, it's really hard to recreate it. And it just, you don't. You know, it's like, what did Bill Clinton do after he was president? He was fairly young. It's like, I don't know. Did you ever think of running for office as a? I did. I tried. I ran for state senate in 1972. Didn't do well. But after the Bernie year. No, no, no. You know, for one thing, I don't like campaigning. And the other thing is that one of the problems is being trained as an attorney to really develop an opinion about something. I really have, I really wanted like really drill into it. And it's really hard to be a generalist when you're in a legislature in a city council because you're not really sure whether the position people are taking is really the right one or the good one or the smart one.  You did a good job.  So what was it like to work with Joe McNeil? That Joe was a. Originally, Joe and I were quite wary of one another until then we developed this great relationship. It was sort of this good cop, bad cop relationship. I was the bad cop and Joe was the good cop in the, in the diplomat for the city. And then it was particularly, I think it was when we had the Bernie decided to tax the hospital and we had the hospital case. And that's when we really played it out. Actually, Joe had some other trial and Bernie and Joe assigned me and Frank Murray to do the trial and it was just, that was just great fun. It was wonderful, you know. So we ended up, we ended up having a close friendship and professionally. It was just really, it was just a great time working with Joseph. Yeah, yeah. Well, I had Joe on the show a little while ago and it was also a great time for him in his life. I asked him, I said, were you gonna, did you ever think of running for office? And he, he said, Gary, I looked around and I saw what it took to not only run for office, but to be in office. And he said, that's okay. I think I'll stay with my legal profession. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, and it's frankly in terms of as an attorney, the power that you have or that you can have, you actually have more power as an attorney to affect things. Case in point being the waterfront. I mean, there was a tell story about that. The late Avery Hall, who was on the waterfront, they had a waterfront commission at that time. I had just started working in City Hall. It was like the second week I was there. And it was like a Rosanna, Rosanna Dana question for those of you who are old enough to remember Saturday Night Live. And he said, well, they had this presentation by the railroad about the development. They wanted to put in this development on the waterfront and they mentioned that it was on filled land, meaning it was land that was filled in to Lake Champlain. And he came in and he said, what's all this about the filled land? And I said, Avery, that's a really good, it was really the question that changed history. It was Avery, the question that changed history. So I hopped in the car and go down to Vermont, the Supreme Court Library, which at that time was actually books and stuff and came across something called the public trust doctrine that basically said the filled land was not private land. It couldn't be privately developed. It was owned by the, it was actually held by the state in trust for the people of the state of Vermont and it had to be put to public use. So I came back and I said, Bernie, you're not going to believe this. The railroad doesn't own the property. Wow. So it took another, took another 89, it took about another eight years for that to work its way through because there was litigation about that. It went to the state supreme court. We ended up winning that decision in 1989. It was a great time too. They waited until the Friday before Christmas, Christmas, on Monday is Christmas weekend. They had this announcement of this waterfront decision and then there was more litigation. The railroad tried to go to the supreme court the next year, the U.S. Supreme Court and then we had to get authorization from the legislature to do any kind of development down there. So, but that was, you want to talk about the legal career. That was certainly the high point of my life. You know, no question about it. Absolutely. And what a difference that makes. So far, I get a little, I get a little annoyed that a lot of things that I think could have been good down there didn't pass because it wasn't perfect or you couldn't get everybody to agree to it. Like, repurposing the Moran plant, I don't think the Moran frame is probably the best use of that site. There were a lot of other proposals down there that I think would have been good. And I get, you know, you can't, you're not going to get consensus on something like that. And so things have been, I think things have been stalled out for too long about what we do with the waterfront. The North 40, which we acquired as a part of our settlement with the railroad, we still haven't, the city figured out what the heck we're going to do with that other than allowing scrub trees to grow on it. And they cut it down every now and then and use it as a dog park. That's it. Is the North 40 filled land or is that? Oh yeah, a big part of it. Sure, it was filled in. That part was filled in. When the railroad used to come in down here through Ingallsby Reveen and come in from the south and then in the Civil War, they relocated the wine. They tunneled under North Avenue and all the, through the escarpment and all that material that they got from tunneling, they filled it and then they, and they also needed to create warps that went out to the lake because this side of the lake is very shallow. And they didn't have enough drafts for boats to come in. So that's basically how that came to pass. Wow, wow. 1869 is when that happened. Wow. What are some other accomplishments during those years that you had? Well, tax reform was a big one. I mean, we really fought very hard for that. We had a number of things that now were taken for granted like the grocery seats tax, you know, impact fees, things of that nature. Tax classification. Finally, getting the legislature to, with the property tax reform that the legislature finally passed after the Vermont Supreme Court decision about state education was in a large part of Bernie's kept banging away at the unfairness of the property tax system. So I think to a large degree, you know, we can take credit for creating a climate that said that that really needed to change. What was it? I think it was called the Brigham decision where the Supreme Court said, no, if this system doesn't work.  How about all the in lieu of tax monies that Bernie went after with the hospital, the university and involvement? Small, yeah, we once again tried to get the Supreme Court to say that the hospital was not a charity and was not tax exempt. That was not successful. I mean, there have been, there have been settlements for the hospital, but it's a small portion of what they really should owe, given the value of the facility. And that would say, I would say that that's not been a great win for us. Great. You know. Okay. All right. It's been okay, but, you know, the same problem now with UVM and housing. It's that, you know, they, all the UVM and they want to put in housing but all the stuff in, but we want a grandfather, the student body that we have now.  I remember in 1990, Gretchen Bailey and I, what we tried to go into Act 250 to get act, they were doing some expansion at UVM and wanted to get Act 250 to impose conditions that they had to house their students. We pointed out that Champlain house their students. At that time, Trinity College was, was, was viable. They house their students. St. Mike's house their students, but UVM has had this culture that they only house the first two year students. And then what you do when you were junior at senior at UVM, you should get an apartment. I did it, you know, and that's what you do. The single biggest problem with housing costs in Burlington is that, is that. Today. Today and back when my father, you know, let's just go back when my father went to UVM after, after the Second World War. They just haven't built a housing to house their student population. And that has had the impact on the, you know, the rents in the housing shortage in Burlington. You know, I think you can try to build housing in Burlington until you're blue in the face, but that's not what the cause is. The cause is UVM. The cause is absolutely UVM. And then what they've done is they, well, they built, they built some more, you know, dormitories in the campus, but they increase their, their, their enrollment so much, it's sort of like the, the Python that swallowed the pig. So you've got this big enrollment blip that's got to go through the, the snake and get on the, you know, I just look at this stuff and I can, I've seen, I've seen this play out for 50 years. It's like nothing new here. And it's a, UVM, it's the same old playbook. Mm hmm. Trying to catch its tail. No, that's just the game they play. That, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we'll, we'll, we'll do a few things that sort of look good, but it's really not fundamentally going to deal with the problem. I mean, UVM, if they really wanted to be, you know, progressive, they could have said, well, look it, you know, the student housing, particularly in awards one and two, that's privately owned, have somebody watch when those go out on the market and have the university buy the stuff up and turn it into university apartment housing in the neighborhoods. At least that would keep the rents down. I mean, something like that or turn them into co-ops or even turn them into timeshares for the students so that you don't have, you don't have people investing in these things to speculate as a moneymaker to charge the students an arm and a leg to live in a rabbit warrants, which is what happens. Mm hmm. All right, so you left government at 91 or so after Peter, you were working with Peter from when he- I left City Hall in 91. I worked for Bernie in Washington. And yes. And for until the fall of 91 and then came back and then actually worked for Joe McNeil's firm and continued to do government work. I mean, I did work on the Barge Canal. I did work for BED. I was on the Electric Commission from 2000 to 2006. Okay, all right. No, I did that. I was involved in the healthcare reform in the 90s and 2000s. That was a bitter disappointment. Hmm, tell us. You're up against the man.  Mm hmm. You know, it was unfortunate. It was really unfortunate. There was some real opportunity and it just- I won't get into the details, but there were certain points the left didn't help itself either. But that was a big disappointment. I still have those- all those boxes and all that stuff. I run the show report and all the stuff. And I actually worked for the Shumlin administration briefly in 2011 on it. But very frankly, that he wasn't- he really wasn't- he was really scared to death of single-payer even though he ran on it. And then he put the kibosh to it a couple of years later. Yeah. That was a disappointment. So, and since then, I've been basically dealing with employment law, sort of what I've fallen into. Okay. Not exclusively, but sort of when I fill out my insurance applications, what's your area of practice? And I go, oh, God, I can't even remember. And then I look at it and it's just such a variety of things that, you know, and that's getting disappointing because the courts are just- they really don't- they're really being totally unsympathetic to employees now. They really make it hard to win discrimination cases and make it really hard to win lawful termination cases. It's gotten worse and worse and worse. Over the years, it's very different when I started doing this in 1995 than it is today. Very, very different. So, and it's not just the Republican courts, Vermont Supreme Court.  Went home, had a bad cold for a week. Oh, well. Is there anything you haven't done that you would like to do? That's a hard question. I should take some time to travel. It's hard to do it when you're a attorney. And I'm trying to- I think I said on your little- your questionnaire, I'm on the glide path to retirement, but can't find the landing lights, you know? Because I still have cases that I'm working on and I'm trying to resolve. Yes. And especially when you're working for yourself. Totally for myself. I'm totally self-employed. I mean, I vacuum and I- I don't do the windows, but the landlord does that, but I vacuum and, you know, that kind of stuff. So take out the trash. Do my own books. Answer my own phone. Do my own word processing. I mean, actually, if it wasn't for, you know, modern computers, the old days where you had a secretary and stuff, there's no way I could do what I do. You know, to do it as a solo practitioner. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you want to mention about your life? Well, one of the things- I mean, one of the things you have to- when I get older, I'm 71, you start counting your- you start- I think it's gratitude. And you have to sit back and you have to- you have to take stock in the opportunities that you had. You know, and I'm privileged. I mean, I came from a middle-class background. I'm a white male in this culture. You know, there are a number of people that were important to me in my life who have since passed away. And I've- you know, I've gone to their generals and I've talked to their families about how it was important for these people gave me an opportunity. And you have to recognize that. And then what you- I think you try to do is to try to use that privilege, if you will, that opportunity to try to help others, which is what I've tried to do. I've tried to devote my professional career to that. You know, that's important. You asked me what my famous- my best quote was and I couldn't think of it. It's actually from Carl Marx and his economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1848 when he said, we are creators of our own history but not under circumstances of our own choosing. And it's the dialectic between agency and circumstances. And I, unfortunately, hear too much now that all people are concerned about or talking about now or circumstances or not talking about agency. You deal with substance abuse. It's exactly what you deal with all the time. You deal with the circumstances that people are in, but they have to have agency. If they don't have the agency, they're not going to- they're not going to climb out of what they're in or they didn't have the agency to prevent getting into the province that they're in. Malcolm X talked about that all the time. Malcolm X talked about being in a really racist society, but Malcolm X and the Muslims went into the prisons and got people that were drug addicts and stuff cleaned up and having really productive lives. I mean, so- What I've enjoyed about your- in my relationship with you, John, is that agency part, you have said, I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to put what I've got into the mix here and see if that can help a situation out. Yeah, it's- Yeah, I've tried to do that. I've tried to do that. As I said, you know, nobody pitches a perfect game but I've tried to do it. And it's really hard when you're up against the inertia of the established order. It takes time to sort of break through and get people to see that there's a different way of doing it. And I'm really troubled of where we're headed culturally and politically. Yeah, it's just really, you know, we could be looking at a nightmare in November.  No, I'm really not very good at that, I have to say. I really not. That's one of the criticisms I've had about people even that I worked with that was terrible about that. I was like the one person in the public defender's office that didn't use interns and law clerks. I just would like kind of do it myself. And that's sort of the way I worked and that's why I've been on my own now for, oh gosh, 20 years. 20 years, 30 years. And as a solo practitioner, I've sort of been able to do that because I've been pretty self-contained. That's sort of the way I worked. So it's probably a failing. Hey, nobody pitches a perfect game. Especially, you know, people criticize Bernie about Bernie didn't do this. Bernie didn't do that. They have a progressive left. We make a socialist politician in the history of the United States that's had more impact on the political culture of this state and of this country than Bernie Sanders. And the answer is nobody. And all the ultra-lefts will Bernie didn't do this. Bernie wasn't perfect on that. It's like, give me a frickin' break. And he's still hanging in there. He's got, he was in yesterday.  So Bernie's still in there, still doing it. Yeah, he sure is. And you are too. Do you guys connect? I have, you know, since Bernie went into the Senate, not a lot. I mean, I went into him occasionally and he had to get together a couple of years ago and for people that worked for him and both in the city and in Washington. So that was fun. It was fun connecting with people like Jeff Weaver. Jeff Weaver and I were pretty close. Jeff used to, when Bernie was running in 2016, he would be at some of these talk shows. Like he was on Chris Matthews. Oh, he, he really knocked one out of the park with Chris Matthews. Really kind of a new one. And I would text Jeff. Jeff and I used to love the movie Spartacus. Jeff and I went to the movie Spartacus when it was re-released in 1991. We went to this big three projector, a cinemascope movie to watch it. All I can remember is who played Spartacus? Kirk Douglas. Kirk Douglas is dimple in the movie. So anyway, when I, when he would, when Jeff would go on these national things, I would text him and I would go, is that you, Spartacus? Yeah, so Jeff was a kid from St. Albans, Vermont, giving Chris Matthews his comeuppance. It's really pretty good. It's really pretty good, special. Any last words before we close? I just want to, you know, I just want to thank you. You know, you had great service to the community and to the city.  You've been thoughtful. You've been measured and you've always spoken from the heart. You've always acted from the heart. And I think you'd never get really upset when the Giants screw up, which is really a feeling in your part. One last story, one last story, folks. Long time ago, the Giants were playing Monday Night Football with the, within the St. Louis Cardinals. And they were, it was terrible. Both teams were just awful and it went into overtime. And we're watching this game at Gary's house. And one of the announcers says, I think it was Frank Humphrey, he says, these teams are so awful. Nobody deserves to win. Nobody did. It was a tie. I remember it well. Yeah. Thank you, John. All right. Thank you. All right. Okay. Bye-bye.


Okay. Good day, everyone. Welcome to the H3Africa DNA Day webinar. My name is Ebony Madden. I am a program director for the H3Africa ELSI program, which is part of the H3Africa Consortium. That's a consortium that was initiated to support cutting egg genomic research and capacity building on the African continent. And this is the second year that we are doing the H3Africa, which is the Human Health and Deready in Africa DNA Day presentation. And this is the second and final presentation for DNA Day. DNA Day's official celebration date is April 25. But the National Human Genome Research Institute celebrates it every year from January through May. DNA Day is a global movement to mobilize, energize, and empower communities, educators and students to innovate, collaborate, and discover the promise of our shared humanity and connection to the natural world. I am very pleased to present Paul Olunini is our speaker for today. Paul Olunini is a computational biologist and PhD research fellow at the African Center for Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer's University in Nigeria. His research work focuses on the use of genomics and computational tools to understand the evolution and genetic diversity of pathogens of public health concerns such as HIV one, Lassa virus, yellow fever, and SARS-CoV-2 virus in Nigeria and West Africa. His presentation will be on the genomic characterization and surveillance of microbial threats in West Africa. When Paul concludes his presentation, Ali Osgood, a program analyst within the National Human Genome Research Institute will moderate a question and answer session. Please place any questions that you have in the Q&A at the bottom of the screen. And thank you very much. Turn this over to Paul. Hi everyone. Thank you for the introduction. So, my name is Paul. And I'll be talking about some of the work we've been doing in the ASB lab on characterizing and trying to understand microbial threats in West Africa. So I'm just going to go ahead and share my screen now. I hope everyone can see my screen. So, so in my presentation I will talk briefly about how we have used genomic tools to understand Ebola outbreaks in Africa. Now, so I'll talk about some of our work using genomic tools to understand Lassa fever outbreaks and yellow fever and also then end with some of the work we've done on COVID-19 in Nigeria. So, as we all know, as probably some of us know, genome sequencing has really revolutionized health care and research all around the world. Ever since the human genome project has completed, so many, so many discoveries have been made as a result of that. It has led to advancement in personalized medicine development of drugs and vaccines for diseases and other things like that. But one of the things we have discovered is, despite how powerful genome sequencing has been and how much it has changed health care and research, a lot of these benefits have still not yet reached Africa or reached African scientists. And that's one of the reasons why ASGID was formed. So ASGID is a consortium based here in the Martin University board, together with partners in Nigeria. It's at the ISTH hospital in the two states of Nigeria, and other hospitals across the country, and together with other partners across Africa. There are partners in Syria alone, partners in Senegal, Liberia, and other parts of Africa. And there will also have partners in the US, the British studio, and other institutions across the world. The major aim of ASGID is to create an environment where African researchers can carry out cutting-edge genomic research and use this to benefit the health of Africans. The research arm of our consortium has been founded by the National Institutes of Health in Africa. One of the things we try to do is characterize fevers of unknown origins using mycobanatidomics. And then we develop diagnostic tools to understand, to detect pathogens in real time. Because one of the things we have discovered in not just Nigeria, but all across Africa, is in a lot of times, during an outbreak of a disease, the disease will have spread so much before we even knew what exactly the person would be out with. So one of the things we try to do in ASGID is to develop diagnostic kits that can detect pathogens in real time. And then we then use this information to also try to understand human and viral genetics. That is, why are some people more susceptible to a particular disease than some other people? Or why is this particular disease more dominant in the particular region of the world, region of the country or region of the continent than other parts? So, like I mentioned earlier, so our goal in ASGID is trying to develop the capacity of African scientists so they can carry out continued genomic research in Africa that can benefit Africans. And so now I'm going to go into some of the practical cases that we have had in ASGID, some of the ways in which in ASGID we have used genomic tools to understand disease outbreaks on the continent. So I'm going to start with the Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016. So, by the time we had gone months into the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Guinea, we still hadn't yet understood what was luckily causing the disease and too many people had been infected and died. It took about almost four months into the outbreak before we actually realized that the outbreak was being caused by the Ebola virus. But by this time, like I mentioned, the virus had already spread so many people across the country and was already spreading to other parts of Africa. So one of the things we did during the particular outbreak was to bring together ASGID partners from all across the world, to bring them together to the massive rest in Nigeria. And then we discussed how we can use genomic tools to combat this outbreak. And quickly, one of the things we did following this meeting was to start sequencing samples of patients. And then within a few weeks, we were able to release close to 100 genomes of the virus publicly available before we even release our paper. And then by August 2015, we had already released extra 150 genomes. And this was really useful in making informed public decisions and also this also helped us to then develop diagnostic kits that helped to detect the virus in real time. And one of the things with our genomics surveillance, the help us understand it during the outbreak in 2014-2016 was we were able to understand that there were four different types of the virus that were spreading in Sierra Leone. And this feature shows you that there was like a single animal to human spillover. And the rest of your book was sustained by human to human transmission. So that was one of the things that genomic tools help us understand, help us understand that the outbreak has been sustained by people coming in contact with infected people. And there was only like few cases of zoonotic introductions into the population. And this is just the picture showing you, showing the typical genome of the virus. And one of the things that genomic sequencing help us understand during the Ebola outbreak was, as the outbreak continued, the virus began to acquire mutations all across the genome. And this particular mutation began to confer some particular characteristics of the virus. Not every mutation will be useful, but some of these mutations and then ends up making, helping the virus to become more transmissible and sometimes more deadly. And this is just a map showing how we used the genomes of the virus to understand how the virus was spreading all across Africa in real time during the course of the outbreak. And this is what this shows the power of genomics and understanding. This is how it breaks and making informed public health responses during outbreaks. So like I mentioned earlier, following the meeting we had, we quickly sequenced our samples and we were able to release close to 100 genomes, and then subsequently released extra 150 genomes. Because we were able to understand the genome of the virus, we were able to then develop back with diagnostic kits, which were a few deployable that is, we could take these kits actually to the villages and to the inner regions of Africa, so that people didn't have to wait to send their samples to the cities or send their samples to foreign countries before we actually understood what was actually going on, what was actually causing diseases. And these diagnostic kits were approved by WHO and USFDA. And by the time the virus got into Nigeria, because we are already prepared for it, because we are under the genomic tools, we were able to quickly sequence the first case or the first, the index case that got into Nigeria. And then we were able to carry out contact tracing to isolate everyone that the index case are coming in contact with. This really helped us to understand the outbreak and helped us to stop the virus from spreading too fast within Nigeria. So within a few weeks we were able to combat the outbreak in Nigeria because quickly we were able to sequence the virus and we were able to carry out contact tracing to trace everyone the patients are coming in contact with and we were able to make public decisions that helped to prevent the outbreak from getting out of hand in Nigeria. And now what we've done so far, it's been the years that have been understanding Lesser Fever in Nigeria. Lesser Fever is also a variety of Fever and it's very endemic in Nigeria, every year in Nigeria we usually have outbreaks of Lesser. And Lesser can be, the mortality rates of Lesser Fever can be quite high, it can be about 15 to 60% in some cases. And one of the things about Lesser Fever, it's a very genetically diverse, the virus is very genetic, genetically diverse. And unlike Ebola that is, unlike Ebola, Lesser is primarily transmitted by good ends, although there are also cases of woman to man transmission, modally in hospitals. And so far we still don't have a vaccine yet and previously there were pro diagnostics and therapeutics for the virus. But one of the things that we have done in our lab at ISGID is we have carried out, one of the things we did was to carry out sequencing of over a hundred patient samples and also wooden samples. And we're able to understand that actually the virus is not new virus in Nigeria, the virus has been circulating in Nigeria for over a thousand years. And then spread out from Nigeria to every coast about 390 years ago. And this is very, this is very, this, this once again shows you the power of genomic tools, genomic tools can help you to understand how much a virus is spreading in a particular population and how long it has been in the population. And one of the things that were sequenced also helped us to understand was to see that there were different clades of the virus that is different in the case of the virus circulating within Nigeria. So in Nigeria we have about three different clades of the virus circulating. So that makes it very difficult to develop, that makes it difficult to develop diagnostic kits to detect the virus within the country. But one of the things we were able to do as a result of our sequencing work was to then develop diagnostic kits that would capture the diversity of the virus within the country. In 2018 we had a, we had a particular surge of lesser fever in Nigeria, and the major concern of, the major concern of scientists and the global public community was, is this surge caused by new variants of the virus. We are going to increase in, increase in amount to amount transmission or what exactly is causing this increase in cases. Again, we collected samples from patients, the samples were sent to our lab at his gate and we carried out, quickly we carried out in real time genomic sequencing, and we were able to obtain the virus, the genomes of the virus from different patient samples. And subsequently we sequenced the virus and did a lot of full data on sequences. One of the things that this helped us to understand was that there was no particular new strain of the virus circulating in Nigeria. So that was to calm the fears of the Nigerian government and also the global public community, that there was, there was no new strain of the virus circulating the country. And our genomic sequencing has helped us to understand that there was no evidence of sustained amount to amount transmission. So, we were able to see that the virus was spreading in Nigeria as a result of leading to human transmission, that is, people were regularly coming in contact with the evidence carrying this virus, and this result was resulting in cases in the country. So, and one of the things that genomic sequencing carried out in our lab also helped us to understand was the diversity of the virus in Nigeria is structured geographically. That is, we realized that we have different clades of the virus circulating in different regions of the country, split by different givers. So, I put this is which we put together in our paper which published in 2018 was that the rodents population spreading this virus to humans couldn't move across these rivers. So, that's why we have like different clades of the virus in different regions of the country. And this was understood by the media rivers. And the interesting thing about this was, all of this work was done within the country by Nigerians entirely carrying out this sequencing in the lab and we're making this results available to the Ministry of Health of the country and the Nigerian staff of this country in real time. And this helped them to make informed public decisions. And this was very helpful in covering the outbreak and this is, this is just like a photographic map showing how the virus spread all over the country over time, and we're able to generate a map like this, using the genomes of the virus so once again I show you the power of genomic sequencing in understanding how pathogens spreading in real time and how the infected people all across different regions in real time. And like I mentioned earlier, we were able to share these results in real time with the Ministry of Health and the Nigerian staff of this country and this helped in making informed public health decisions. One of the things we've also done through the years has been helping to contain a relief outbreak in the country. Also in 2018, about a cluster of 50 patients reported to one of our partners putting the country. But the doctors couldn't figure out what is actually causing their infections. So the doctors carried out malaria test and typhoid test and because this particular region was endemic for LASA, they said that LASA got tested and these patients were negative. But some of them were dying and we still didn't understand what was going on. So the sample is sent to our lab at ISGID and we carried out sequencing of samples. We were able to obtain the genomes of the virus and using the genomes of the virus we were able to, first of all we were able to understand that the outbreak was being caused by yellow fever virus. We reported our findings to the Nigerian staff of this country and this enabled the government to then initiate a yellow fever vaccination program in the country to stop the outbreak before it went so far. And one of the things we did was to obtain the genomes of the virus, like I mentioned, and then we were able to see that the virus was most likely imported from neighboring West African countries. And also, I haven't talked about that, I'm not going to talk about some of the work we've done in COVID-19 in Nigeria. So ever since the outbreak started in Nigeria our lab has been very involved in carrying out testing, carrying out diagnoses, and also carrying out sequencing to understand how the virus is spreading across the country, how people are getting infected, mutations occurring across the genomes of the virus, and to check if the virus is becoming more transmissible or more deadly. So Nigeria reported its first case of COVID-19 on 20th of February 2020, and this first case, this in this case sample was sent immediately to our lab, and within 48 hours we were able to release the first African SARS-CoV-2 genome from our lab, and this has been very useful in informing public health response in the country. So just like I mentioned earlier, one of the things we do in our lab is we carry out diagnosis of COVID-19 screening samples, and then we carry out the diagnosis sequencing to understand, to obtain the genome of the virus and then understand how the virus is spreading in real time all across the country. So this is just a chart showing an overview of the process that it takes to receive the sample, the process of the sample, to carry out sequencing and then carry out completion analysis. So this is a map showing the regions of the country from which we have obtained genomes so far. So we have obtained genomes so far from over 20-something states of the country, and this really has been useful in understanding how the virus is spreading across the country. So this is what this image shows you what we call a phylogenetic tweet. So basically phylogenetic tweet can help you to understand, especially on pathogens over time, and also understand changes occurring in genomes of the virus. So one of the things that it feels these phylogenetic analysis has helped us to really understand has been to see how the virus is spreading across the country in real time. I will give you a particular scenario. There was a particular case where by the time we sequenced the samples and built out views, we realized that a cluster of sequences, there was a particular sequence of about 10 of them that were clustering very closely together. So our question, so we went back to find out more about the patients and then we realized that these 10 people were traveling together in the same bus from one state of the country to another state of the country. So they most likely infected one another. So quickly we were able to make these findings available to the necessary authorities and we were able to isolate these particular patients. So this shows you the power of genomics in understanding, in understanding transmission of pathogens across space and across time. And one of the things we've also been doing since the beginning of the pandemic in Nigeria has been to check for, like I mentioned, mutations occurring across the world of the virus. And one particular linear that has been causing that has been a major focus of public health response all across the world has been the dual or seven image, which was always in the UK. So one of the things we've been doing in our lab has been monitoring the spread of the linear in the country. So we detected our first beyond seven in Nigeria on the 14th of December 2020, and ever since then 42% of us of our genomes have been the B117 show so in showing that that this particular lineage is now becoming dominant in the country. And one of the things about the B117 image is it has been shown to be highly transmissible and to be moderately. And now we've seen, we've seen this particular image in the capital of the country, Abuja and the state and other states of the country. And this is just a tree highlighting just the B117 image in the country. This really helps us to understand the patterns of spread of this particular lineage in the country. And one of the things we realized is there has been a lot of spread between countries, besides with these states in the country that are sharing close borders. And this is just a chart showing the frequency of different lineages of the virus in the country. And as you can see from the chart, this on this chart, the B117 lineage of the virus has been particularly dominant ever since we first discovered it in December. And this is just a chart showing the spread of the different mutations associated with this particular lineage across the genomes of our, across the genomes of samples collected in the country. So this video down here is just showing how different lineages of the virus have been spreading all across the country over time. And it has really made useful in helping to inform public health response. And we'll report our findings regularly with the Magistrate for Disease Control, and this helps the agency to make different public health decisions. And one of the things we've also been doing in the country in our lab has been to check for mutations in, check for primer mutations, like as you can see, there are different primers used for, we used to call your diagnosis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So one of the things we do is to monitor if there are mutations occurring in the regions of the genome where these primers bind to. Because if there are mutations, then these primers might not actually pick the virus. And so we might be having a lot of false negative cases. And one of the things we've discovered is in some of the primers we've been using, there have actually been mutations occurring in the regions that we divide the virus. And we'll be aware that this might be, this has been resulting in some false negative cases in the country. And so, see, early this year there was, from late last year to early this year there was, there has been like a second wave of the virus in Nigeria. And one of the things we are analyzing in our lab has shown is some of these resurgence has been mostly in legal states in Abuja and Karnas state. Legal states as an international airport and is probably the economic hub of the country. And most people coming into the country usually come into the legal state. And this could be one of the major reasons why there was a particular surge of the virus in Nigeria around December last year to early this year. We realize that most of these people were people coming back into the country during the early this season and things like that. One of the things that has also been a focus of our attention in our lab so far has been a new lineage that was first discovered in patients who are 12 years from Nigeria in the UK and the US. And this particular news called the Bureau of Actified lineage has been known to have some particular unique mutations. So in our lab we have discovered that 39% of our genomes which we have sequenced since we first discovered this in Nigeria have been the Bureau of Actified lineage. So this has, I wanted to one of the things we are currently doing in the lab is to understand if this image actually arose in Nigeria or not. So we are currently carrying out some analysis of our genomes to understand if this image actually arose in Nigeria or not. So to round up my presentation, we now realize that the Bureau of Actified lineage is now the dominant lineage in the country. And we are seeing the emergence of a new lineage called the Bureau of Actified lineage, which is even spreading just as fast as the Bureau of Actified lineage. And one of the things we discovered from our analysis is, there has been multiple introductions of the SAS 2 virus in Nigeria from different parts of the world. And we've seen a lot of community transmission of the virus in different states of the country. So I would like to acknowledge all of my colleagues in the ISGID lab without from this potential to be possible, and also all our partners and collaborators. This is just pictures of my colleagues in the lab who have been involved in this one. So thank you everyone for listening. Thank you, Paul for that presentation and for sharing your time and expertise with us. And now we'll jump into questions. So one of the first questions someone asked was, can you compare the emergence of the four Ebola variants to the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 variants? And they also wondered if the timelines or types of mutations are comparable. Thank you for your question. So like I mentioned, one of the things that viruses are known for is that when they spread from person to person, they acquire mutations. And then these mutations can then, accumulation of these mutations can then result in new variants may form. So, can I compare the emergence? Yes, you can compare the emergence because because these variants are arising as a result of mutations. So the more people are infected, the more variants will see a colony population. Thank you. Another question someone asked was, what actually drives the mutation in primer binding sites in infectious disease pathogens? A lot of factors can drive the mutations. One of the major factors can be human immune response. So when these viruses infect people in order to try within an individual, they acquire mutations so that they can try. So the more they acquire mutations, some of these mutations will occur in the region in which these primers bind to. And then when we then use this virus, this particular primers to carrier diagnosis, we can have cases of false negatives. So what drives the mutations? So the more people, these viruses infect, the more they acquire mutations in order to survive and then the more we would see mutations in primer binding sites. Thank you. So in your presentation, you mentioned a couple times that through this work, you've been able to provide real time results to public health authorities. And someone was wondering how the ministry and other authorities communicate the risks of LASA and Ebola to communities. So I think one of the things that the government has been doing has been to create jingles, try to create videos in different languages that we could speak across the country. And then one of the things the government has also done is to actually go into these communities, talk to people who are well respected in these communities, maybe like the head of the community like talk to people who are well respected, who will then pass information across to the members of the community. One of the things that has really been very, very helpful in passing information across about different diseases and one of the things that the government has also done is using social media, which has also been very powerful in spreading the news about these pathogens and why people should take questions. Thank you. So it sounds like making the information accessible to communities is really important. Someone asked, what are some of the challenges to employing genomic surveillance techniques in communities? Yeah, so one of the challenges that we've been facing for instance in our lab for instance has been some of these genomic sequencing tools can be quite expensive. And so sometimes you need to secure funding to be able to like actually acquire them and then make use of them. And sometimes in this part in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, some of these funding are usually not readily available. And also expertise also matters. There are not many people in this region of the world who are actually skilled in using some of these equipment and tools. So it's always important to carry out, so it has been really useful, it has been really important to carry out trainings and constantly train many more African scientists to be able to use these tools. So one of the challenges that we are facing has been funding and also lack of expertise using some of these tools. And what are some of the tools in the lab that support the next generation sequencing that you use to analyze the data? Okay, so one of the things we do is we use different bioinformatics pipelines to assemble. So one of the tools we use, we use our VARRA NGS pipeline, which is developed by collaborators at the Gronis Institute. We use this pipeline to assemble our VARRA systems. And then we then use other softwares like NexTrain to build for genetic trees. And then we use softwares like pangolin and NexClades from the different lineages and clades of the virus spreading in the country. Thank you. And a little bit ago you mentioned the importance of training and education opportunities in Africa. Could you speak a little bit more about your training path within H3 Africa and your path to the position that you're currently in? Yes, so since I joined the H3 Africa project, one of the interesting things about H3 Africa is very particular about training African scientists. So I've been familiar to attend a lot of H3 Africa like trainings and webinars. And also my lab, the ASGID lab also has supported me to attend a lot of like, to attend like internships and trainings abroad in the US and in the UK. And this has helped me personally as an H2 Africa PhD fellow to acquire like skills and expertise in the country to use some business tools to understand these aspects in the country. Thank you for sharing. Someone was wondering, do you think the relatively low COVID-19 rates in Nigeria and in Africa compared to Western countries is due to genetic or environmental factors and could you discuss the environmental factors? Well, I mean, one of the things we are currently like, some of the research going on right now is there to understand the genetic reasons for some of this, some of the low, like I said, low cases we're having in African countries. But one of the things I might say is, some of the low cases we're having might not necessarily be because we're not, because the virus is not spreading in the country, but maybe because we're not carrying out enough tests. When we see the amount of testing going on in Nigeria, for instance, compared to in other non-African countries, we realize that there's a very big gap. So we are not actually carrying out enough tests within the country. So we can't really say we have low amount of cases. But also, we can also realize the fact that obviously there can be like other environmental factors, but that is still something that we are trying to like understand better. Or maybe our exposure to like maybe like previous pathogens could be confirming resistance and things like that, but that is something that we are trying to better understand. Thank you. The next question was, someone asked if you have considered using newer portable sequencers, and they also wondered if you faced any challenges in terms of biologic and bioinformatic equipment accessibility. Yes, so in our lab years, we've been using newer portable sequencers like the Oxford Nanopore, we've been using the Illumina I6100. So yeah, so we've been using newer sequencers to generate sequences in real time. So we didn't just use the Mi6 and the I6 and newer sequencers, we also actually used the smaller sequencers to obtain more sequences. And are we facing any challenges in terms of biologic and bioinformatic equipment accessibility? So one of the major challenges we've been facing in terms of has been, I believe, supply and reagent change. So sometimes when we order for like reagents to carry out sequencing because of so many logistical issues, sometimes it takes weeks and even months for this reagent to arrive in the lab. And this can actually, this sometimes slows down the work we do in that lab. So yes, we've been having a lot of like logistic challenges like supply chain issues with customs when the, even when the reagents arrive in the conflict. And this sometimes slows down our work. But in terms of bioinformatics accessibility, the major issue we've been having under area has been, the major issue has been banned with an internet issues. So sometimes internet connection is always like a big challenge for us. And so that sometimes affects, it slows down some of our analysis work and affecting all the computational work we do in the lab. Thank you for sharing. Someone wondered if you could describe patient privacy protections that are in place in Nigeria, or in other African countries for genomic surveillance. And is it a challenge to build trust in communities? So in our lab, for instance, one of the things we've done through the years in order to build trust has been we actually go into these communities and try to let them understand the relevance of our work. Within just coming and collect the sample, we actually try to like also develop the communities. So for instance, if we are going to work in a particular community, we would try to, because of the funding we received, you know, from the Africa from World Bank and several other organizations. We try to actually develop like maybe clinics in this community so that we actually benefit in the community as we also work in them. So it's interesting about coming there collecting the samples that also benefit the community. And when it comes to patient privacy, we make sure we make sure that we do not, our patients know that we do not release any private information. So we make sure that all our studies before we carry them out goes to rigorous ethical considerations before we even carry them out. We make sure we take our time to put that special privacy. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, that's really important. Looks like someone said that they are a pharmacist in Nigeria and they're interested in the surveillance of infectious diseases. So what are some of the opportunities what this person have from a student or h3 Africa in terms of scholarships. Yes. Thank you so yeah so. One of the things, one of the major focuses of is good and also it comes in as a whole is to build the capacity of African science. One of the ways that is going to get to Africa does this is by training masters and PhD students. So, yeah, it is good and I'm sure even the H2 as we hold there are lots of scholarships for like masters and PhD students. So, so if you're interested, you can check out the eskip website and show you find like how to apply and you find like opportunities for scholarships in the lab. We have a lot of opportunities for masters and PhD students. Thank you. And do you have any advice for young scientists who are interested in being part of this field. So, my, my, my advice would be to make use of, you know, the opportunities that available. I can mention that there are several opportunities available to traffic. Regularly organized several training several webinars on bioinformatics on molecular biology and genomics. And some of these resources are usually shared social media. So, so make use of all the opportunities you have. And like I mentioned, even as good is constantly like accepting masters and PhD, then so you can check out the website is good. And you can see how to apply. Also, reach out, you can reach out to if you see anybody in the field. Who's working to study, reach out to them. Now social media has made it very, very easy to access people so send DM send personal messages send emails, which are people and you realize that more people are willing to help. Thank you. I feel like someone has a question about data sharing. They wondered how do you ensure that the data generated is shared amongst other labs across the continent. And how do you ensure that that data is secure. Yeah. One of the things I can imagine whenever we doing these are based on every time you put a genome sequence in the lab one of the things we do is to make sure we release data in real time so this can help to inform public health response. So we released release. Our genome sequences on this side and NCBI, we make them available on virological so that people all across the country and across the world can see them. And one of the things we also do is we make sure that we do not release any private patient. So we only release genome sequences of pathogens of interest, but we make sure we do not release any private patient data. And so basically, and then we make sure we share our influences and results with, like I mentioned, the NCDC, which is not just about this country and other authorities in the country so that they can help to inform their public health responses. Like I mentioned, we also make use of social media. And then, because we have a lot of partners across the country. And so these are some of these are some of our partners are located actually in the areas in the country. So we, we have, we have people that we have trained will go out into these communities. And then we'll make findings available to people in these communities and break it down to them in ways they will understand. And also, some people will train also understand the language, languages spoken in these communities so they can actually communicate to them in their own language and make them understand our findings. That will make a motion that the information we get from the lab is actually available for everyone. And there are there any other ways that you or health authorities ensure that scientific data is communicated in more rural areas. So I didn't get a question. So I didn't get a question. I'll repeat it. Someone wondered how do you ensure your scientific data is communicated in the rural areas. So I think you touched on that a little bit, we would love to hear more. Okay. So, like I mentioned, many people who understand the language spoken in these communities, and then it's going to the communities and talk to like people in the community and make them understand our findings. One of the things we also do is whenever we go into the community we try to meet with the heads of the communities, like, it gets a king in the community or the chief meets with the heads or any people who are well respected within that community, and talk to them and didn't help us to pass this motion across. And one of the things we also do is, like I mentioned earlier to create videos great jingles in very interactive like media information so that people can actually watch and this can really help them to understand what we do in the lab and break it down to them in a way they wouldn't understand. Thank you. Someone said, you mentioned that social media is being used to communicate with communities. Do you think that the mobile health approach is making a difference. Yeah, yeah, I think so, especially in Nigeria, I think it's actually making a huge difference. I think, I think it's, it's making people more receptive to scientific findings. And it's also making people really understand better what scientists and doctors and health officials actually do. So I think yeah I think it's making a difference. That's awesome to hear. Someone also said you mentioned precision medicine. How do you ensure that this becomes democratizing in a country of almost 200 million with over 300 or so ethnic groups. So, I mean, this is something that we are constantly working with different, you know, organizations are working with the government working with different partners to make sure that this is achieved in the country. We have a long way to go in Nigeria and Africa zero when it comes to like precision medicine and making this democratizing this but this is something that we are constantly working on is something that we constantly meet with people on the ground just to see how we can make this equitable and accessible across the country. So this is something we are constantly working on. Thank you for answering that. Someone wondered how is your research supported beyond H3 Africa and other international funding sources. Has the government invested in genomics. So far, one of the many challenges we've been having in Nigeria has been a government has not been too willing to invest in research. So our lab, we are majorly funded by the graphical NIH at the World Bank. You can do that. So we are majorly funded right now by international organizations like the auditions projects. So we are majorly funded by international organizations right now. One of the things we also tend to do is to keep companies tend to convince the government to invest in genomic research for so far, like I mentioned, the government has not been too willing but we're hoping that will change a couple of years or the nearest future. Do you think COVID-19 and addressing this outbreak has changed public perception of genomic characterization and surveillance at all? Yeah, I think so. I think during COVID, we have been very aggressive in reaching out to people, especially to non-scientists. So I think this has really helped people to better understand what we are telling you, because before people just don't understand how genomics actually contributes to their health or affect them personally. I think some of the work we've done during this pandemic, aggressively going out, creating social media awareness, talking to people in the community, I think that actually changed people's perspective. And it has made people more open and more understanding of genomics and how it helps them stay healthy. I think the pandemic has helped us. I think someone was wondering if there are opportunities for undergraduate students as well. Yeah, so I think the most interesting right now, yes, so there are opportunities for undergraduate students and to be involved in genomic research, because our lab is based within the university, so we also support undergraduates and so yes, there are opportunities for undergraduates. And then, could you describe some of the major challenges you faced conducting genomics research in Nigeria and on the African continent? Yes, so I think one of our major challenges, and I think I mentioned this earlier has been funding. Somebody asked a question, most of our funding has been coming from international organizations. So, we haven't really, the government hasn't really funded much of the work we do. So, that has been a major challenge, getting the government to inform the work we do. Also, and that major challenge we're going to have in has been supplied chain for the agents. I mean, like I said, like I mentioned in my presentation, sometimes when we order for agents, it sometimes takes months before they get to the lab. And this is the result of different factors. So this also can really slow down research work. I mean, imagine wanting to carry out sequencing is the sequencing agent is taking months to arrive in the lab. This is months that we could have used to, you know, obtain like several genomes. So supply chain has been a major challenge also. And another major challenge, which I think the awareness we've been creating during the COVID pandemic has helped in alleviating a bit has been initially people just don't understand how genomics benefit them, what exactly contributes to their lives. So, you have to understand how our research work is really advanced to them. But I think it has also been like a major challenge. But I think one of the things we've been doing in doing the outbreak, you know, communicating to people aggressively, which is not, aggressively, which is not, I think that's also, but many challenges have been funding and then supply chain. Sometimes even when agents arrive in the country, you know, you still have to go through a lot of like customs issues and things like that. So that affects research work a lot. Thank you for sharing. And I think this might be our last question. What have you found, or what things have you found to be the most rewarding about this work that you are doing? Yeah, I think the most rewarding has been just knowing that the work I do in the lab, the work that my colleagues and I do in the lab is actually, you know, saving people's lives. I mean, like, when we make our findings available to health authorities, particularly helps them make informed, public decisions. I think that has really been very fulfilling personally for me and I think for my colleagues in the lab. And knowing that what we are doing is actually directly affecting the lives of people, making people's lives better, helping people to survive, to live, you know, earlier lives. So I think that has been very fulfilling personally for me and I'm here for all my colleagues in the lab. Sorry, I was muted. Definitely. And I think with that, thank you so much for sharing this important work that you are doing. Thank you to all of our attendees for coming and I hope everyone has a great rest of your day or afternoon or evening depending on where in the world you are. And thank you again, Paul. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone.


I'm also going to try and bring in one or two of the questions from the floor to try and do both of my responsibilities. Perhaps I might actually ask Tessa Jowl in light of what's happened here in response to a question from Eirone Ripadimina from the LSE. Perhaps you could reflect a little bit on the mechanisms that triggered the demand of a strong London government after all that time with no mayor. And from those mechanisms, do you think there are some lessons that might be transferable to Mumbai? Well I think that one of the great political battles and defining political battles in London of the 80s was the abolition of the Greater London Council. So London is a city that had had its own government. Its own government was wound up and it became, as I say, became one of the great cause for progressives to fight the abolition of London's government. So in a sense the existence of London government was in the recent memory of the progressive centre left and it was a major commitment following our election in 1997 to restore London government. So I mean I think that the kind of democratic argument is probably from London's point of view the most powerful but that was also linked to very strong voices from business about the benefit of the clear leadership of elected government in order to promote business confidence. I could ask our respondents to keep their remarks relatively brief. Can I ask Ashok Baal, who is the Deputy Chairman of the Mumbai Port Trust, to reflect on what we've heard this morning. Thank you very much. In fact Mr Correia in his presentation referred Mumbai City. Mr Cyrus Gazdar, he wants a city without port because he wants the dock lands to be relocated and released for cities alternative use. I would like to offer my observations on these comments. As you may be aware the Mumbai City or sorry Mumbai Port as an organized entity came into being in 1873 although this port was in existence since Portuguese times. So the port and the city form an integral part of the city's history and legacy. The port is an inseparable part of cities identity, character and history and this inclusive identity needs to be preserved and protected. The historical link of the port from the city cannot be severed. Second, there appears to be a perception in some quarters that the old port of Mumbai is declining or it has no future. This perception is far from the truth. Today this port is the fastest growing major port in the country. In fact it has recorded a very strong sustained increase in traffic for last several years. From 26 million tonnes in 2002-3 it doubled to 52 million tonnes in 67 and it is set to achieve 60 million tonnes during the current fiscal. And I'd like to emphasize that this steady increase in traffic is associated with rapid decline of its hinterland. After 96 when the port sector was thrown upon to the private sector participation many ports and terminals came up on the west coast. As a result the hinterland of Mumbai port which was at one time extended up to north India, central India and western India has rapidly shrunk and today it is limited to Mumbai city and its adjoining areas. And let me be on record to say that 95% of the cargo that is handled by Mumbai port is either originating from or destined to Mumbai region in its surrounding areas. 76% of the cargo is captive to the Mumbai port. Therefore this underscores the locational necessity of the port for this region. And any forced displacement of a major economic activity like Mumbai port will be very counterproductive and detrimental to the interest of the port. Having said that, see now we are talking about the eastern waters you know there are references about the eastern waters development. Yes Mumbai port occupies a part of the eastern waterfront and we need to understand the unique character of the eastern waterfront which is a part of the Mumbai harbour. Enclosed by the mainland on one side and the island on the other side it provides a very safe, natural, sheltered and protected harbour unique of its kind in the world and which is eminently suitable for development of port and shipping activities. See we are talking you know when you talk about this Bombay port, I'll take a minute. When you talk about the Bombay port we talk about its landed estates. Yes it's a landed estates which are not meant for the port's operational areas and need to be redeveloped and there is no opinion about that. But then it has to keep in mind a recent judgement of the Supreme Court which protects the tenants and it needs to take into account the interest of the tenants. And as far as the land estate is concerned we have a business plan in place which provides for putting land for public use. Mainly as Mr Correia was referring to, the passenger water transport between Mumbai city and the different locations across the harbour. We plan to have a cruise terminal, we want to develop marina, we have provided a project for social housing. Thank you. I just have a couple of observations and hearing the excellent panellists and I liked the presentations they made about the future of the city. Now I think it occurs to me and I'm a writer so my task is to communicate. It occurs to me that the eventual plans for what can save Mumbai are known to most people. As in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute which seems forever intractable, the eventual terms of a settlement are known to most people. We need things like a directly elected mayor and some kind of reshifting of the role of the port trust. We need more public transport to disperse some of the population across the harbour. The problem is in how to communicate this to the vast majority of the people that live in the city that don't speak our language literally or figuratively. They have no voice in what we deliberate in rooms like this but they do have the vote. This is where all our plans or visions or hallucinations come up against the reality of a population which in the slum areas votes at the rate of some 90% and a population in precents like this in South Bombay which stays aloof from politics on the ground. We don't vote and by and large we don't participate in the political process. The difference between the world's two great democracies in India and the US is that in India the poor vote. In order for any kind of improvement to be made viable we need to communicate our plans to the majority of the people of the city and I don't see that being done. The second observation I'd like to make is that unless we fix the problems of the villages we're not going to fix the problems of the cities. Rahul Mehrotra once said to me, we have a problem as planners in cities like Mumbai. The nicer we make this city, the more roads, the more buildings we build, the more public transport, the more the number of people that will want to come and live here. So unless agriculture is made viable again in the countryside, unless you can keep them down on the farm, I don't see long term sustained solutions to the problems of cities like Mumbai. Thank you. Narendra Nair, director of Bombay First. Thank you. For me personally it's a great satisfaction to participate in this conference here today, organized by Urban Age, to dealing with the city of Mumbai. Sanjay referred to a vision which was prepared four years ago and I, at Bombay First, was particularly heavy in a way to be associated with preparation of that vision. It was actually four years ago when we said that the city was decaying, everybody realized a vision had to be prepared and a document which was prepared which I think Andy showed on his slide earlier on this. So what have we achieved in the last three or four years? I think one thing matters great satisfaction that is a great awareness now with NGOs, with the people, the citizens that something needs to be done with the city media. If you open a newspaper every morning there is a reference to what is happening in the city, city needs to be done. A public-private partnership has been created for the first time to deal with the governance of the city. There is a citizen action group constituted by the government of Maharashtra where 30 citizens of the city sit with the government and the empowered committee will sit with the government to see how the city's various initiatives could be monitored. We have launched a largest, I think, an urban renewal program. There is going to be investment of something like 50 to 60 billion dollars taking place in the city here in next decade. That I think is a very, very important step. What are the constraints? I think the minister referred to that there has to be courage and there has to be boldness and that I think is what we require. Our city development will not take place without the political leaders supporting it and they have to have courage and boldness that I think is very, very important that we need. A vision, a lot of people talk about vision. Vision is very important. We need to have a vision and we do have a vision for the city which Sanjay pointed out showed us what the vision is. If all those things happen in the next ten years, this will be a real world class, can be a world class global city. What are the constraints that we have got here? We have a land use. It's a port, it's a port city, it's an island city, it's a land use. We talk about the port land, I will not get into a debate on that. But I think there could be a win-win situation for the port and the city. A lot of countries, a lot of cities around the world, a lot of other countries, the ports were there and they have given part of the land to the city. London is an example in itself. So it doesn't mean that the port is good. Then the transport has been referred to several people. Now just to, we have neglected our transport. We are carrying on 21st century on the 19th century transport structure that was built out there. Migration is a very big problem. You have two to three hundred thousand people coming into the city living in slums. So there needs to be tackled. We need to find a way how we can stop that, how we can deal with that. One of the things the government policies, policies adopted a few years ago, if you let to be known around the world, around the country, that if you come to Bombay, you will live in a far, you will replace, you will get a free housing. So that doesn't, that's not going to help out. The other biggest issue here is the planning. There has been no proper planning in the city for the development. So we need to have a proper planning authority, proper planning, a holistic plan like the London plan. Which is a great note to end on, I think. Thank you, Mr Nair. I'm sorry to interrupt. One last point I'd like to say is because we're looking at investment of 60 billion dollars. We need to have a proper implementation mechanism in place. If that is not, our record of implementation has not been very good. The last word was to have been with Sheila Patel but unfortunately she can't be with us. So Sunda Burra has stepped in at a very short notice to have the last and I'm sure very brief word. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say one thing that I think the direction Mumbai will take will depend crucially upon whether we believe in participatory democracy or not.  Recently, for example, the government for reasons unclear has said that slum redevelopment projects do not need the consent of the people. Particularly certain types of large government owned, where government managed projects. So to us this seems sort of profoundly undemocratic. How can you decide what is good for the people without consulting them? So I think public debate, transparency, a kind of discourse model of democracy will involve the poor to us, our organisation which works with the urban poor. We feel that this is really a key element. Thank you. Thank you for such. Thank you for a ringing conclusion to this morning's conversation.