Ologies with Alie Ward - Coronasode: Virology (COVID-19) with Dr. Shannon Bennett + various ologists

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

Folks, it’s a megasode. Not one, but 4 ologists. “Coronavirus” is on everyone’s lips -- and some people’s hands -- but what is it? Where did it come from? How does it spread? How dangerous is it? What should we do? Who’s most at risk? Was it biowarfare? Do bats spread it? Should you wear a mask? Can we still smooch our dogs on the face? Do we need to doomsday prep? What’s it like to live in a leper colony? Alie sits down with Dr. Shannon Bennett: a microbiologist, a molecular epidemiologist, a virologist and the Chair of Science at the California Academy Science. She is deeply informed and warm and charming and patient. All these questions will be answered and your panic will be swapped out for informed, empowered action and compassion. You will also wash your hands a lot. Whether or not you bathe in whiskey is up to you. Follow: Dr. Shannon Bennett at twitter.com/microbeexplorer and Instagram.com/microbeexplorer Listen to Chiropterology (BATS) with Dr. Merlin Tuttle Listen to Disasterology (EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT) with Dr. Samantha Montano Listen to Disinfectiology (BLEACH) with Dr. Evan Rumberger A donation went to: California Academy of Sciences Sponsor links: Kiwico.com/ologies; HelixSleep.com/ologies; AurateNewYork.com/ologies More links at alieward.com/ologies/virology 100 Humans on Netflix Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, just a quick preamble, a little update. Today is March 18th. This was recorded just about a week ago, not that long ago at all, but already got a lot of updates. And I just want to let you know that I reached out to Dr. Shannon Bennett and asked if she had anything else you wanted to let us know, just as a quick update on this. And she said, quote, daily new confirmed cases are growing in number exponentially here in the US. And that is in light of one of the lowest per capita testing rates worldwide by country. That's 26 tests per million people as of March 10th. And that means that even though we all recognize that confirmed cases are just the tip of the iceberg of actual infections in the US, our iceberg is particularly submerged. In short, it's time to take social

distancing seriously and flatten the curve. So this episode will tell you what you need to know about COVID-19, how it spreads, how it affects the human body and why it's so important right now to isolate. So if you are isolating, social distancing, staying in, staying out at the bars, we can do this, y'all. I myself haven't left the house since Thursday. This is very cozy. So thanks for listening to this. Thanks for staying informed. And here is the broadcast that came out on March 10th. Stay safe. Wash your hands. Oh, hey, it's your friend who washes her hands roughly five times more often than she did last week. Allie Ward, back with a special ep of oligies. So this episode is coming out March 10th, and it was not even conceived of until a few days ago. But guess

what? We need it. I wanted it. We made it. So pass it on to anyone who needs a distillation of what the hell is going on and how much we should be freaking out. It's fascinating. It's informative. I'm so glad these oligists were available. But first, kind of a secret up top. I mentioned last year as a secret at the end of an episode that I was shooting a new show for Netflix. And y'all, it finally comes out this week on March 13th, this Friday. It's called 100 Humans, and it's bananas. We got 100 people who represent the demographics of the United States, and alongside social psychologists and statisticians, ran them through experiments to see if people are more biased than they think they are. And if having fun makes you more productive,

and if the placebo effect works in new age spa treatments, and what age group could build furniture the fastest, it's wild. It's out March 13th. It's on Netflix. Please do watch it. Tweet about it. The hashtag is 100humans. Okay. Also, thank you to everyone who has ever contributed to patreon.com slash oligies and made this show possible. Thanks everyone who's out there wearing oligies merch. And for everyone who boosts the show and keeps it up among the science giants, just by rating it and making sure you're subscribed and texting links to your friends, like a virus. And of course, those of you who review it for me to creep and weep, such as this week's from booboo rocks out, who says, Dear dad word, I'm ready because

I have some rather big news I wanted to share with you. I got into grad school. That was all caps. Sorry to shout at you, but I'm just so very excited. Listening to your wild and wacky podcast inspired me to finally, finally pursue my dream of a PhD. So thanks for that and all the hard work you do to show us that smart people are really just people like the rest of us, awkward, gross, funny, suffering from imposter syndrome and all the rest. Booboo rocks out, hell yes, to a botany related episode one day. Go get them. Also listener, KG Demerist, happy to have put a skeletological smile on your face. Okay, virology, we're in it. Let's get into it. I had planned to interview the director of science at the California Academy of Sciences, this petite,

brunette, badass Dr. Shannon Bennett for a colcidology episode about mosquitoes and skeeter diseases and malaria and dengue fever and Zika. And I arrived with your Patreon questions in hand. And as her wonderful assistant, Andrew, was walking me down the hallway, hey Andrew, he mentioned that Dr. Bennett had just given a talk to all the staff members at the Cal Academy of Sciences about COVID-19. As she is a virologist, it is very up on the topic and the research and the outreach. Hot damn, I said, let's change this entire thing up. We're doing virology, which comes from the Latin virus, meaning poisonous substance, which comes from the word for a sap of plants, or a slimy liquid, a potent juice, which is after all, what is dripping from our

face openings, threatening to kill friend and foe alike. And we're all pretty scared and confused. Now, because this is a really huge and important topic, I figured let's make this kind of a bit of a salad with more than oneologist. Let's make it a special, let's get a little crazy. I also reached out to previous guests, including Disasterologist Dr. Samantha Montano. I sprinkled in some wisdom from disinfectiologist and bleach chemist Dr. Evan Rumberger, and also touched base with beloved Chiroptorologist Dr. Merlin Tuttle about pointing our unwibbed fingers accusationally toward the back caves. But the backbone of this special episode is Dr. Shannon Bennett, who sat down for a full length chat about her work and this new novel virus. She's knowledgeable and passionate

and addresses not only the genetics of the virus, but the symptoms and infection rate and prevention and testing and how we should handle the fear and the seeming chaos of a pandemic and what these virus population curves mean. And if you're freaked out, that's okay, but you will leave it feeling armed and empowered. I promise. So wash your hands, calm your nerves and feed your brains with this bonanza of Corona with fourologist folks, a disaster handler, a hygiene scientist, a Batman, and of course, Chief of Science at the California Academy of Sciences by Roland just Dr. Shannon Bennett. Okay, I handed Dr. Bennett a mic and instantly apologize that she had to touch something I touched and we were off. I'm going to give you this. I'm sorry that. No,

don't worry. It's okay. We'll just watch later. We're impermeable. Yes. Right? Yes. It's only if we take this and touch our eyes, nose, and mouth before washing. So we're set. That's a good point. I gotta stop touching my face. Fifth on average, 15 times an hour and 90 times a day, we touch our face. We don't even know it. Are you serious? Yeah. And I think it's part of our grooming heritage. You know, as primates, we groom and we're always grooming and we just don't even know it. And we can't touch other people's faces, right? Well, that, you know, socially, we don't usually do that either. But okay, good to know. And you are a molecular epidemiologist. You are a virologist. You got a lot of allergies under your belt. It's really fun. Yeah. How many, you also microbiology

too? I call myself a microbiologist because I study viruses in the context of the rest of the microbial world they live in. And so virologist and microbiologist, why not? Yeah. And molecular epidemiologist. And you've got a busy week. You've got a busy couple of weeks, haven't you? It's been very exciting. Oh my goodness. Your work, I know, has you've spent a lot of your time looking at mosquitoes and malaria and dengue fever. And you yourself, I understand, have not just been a doctor, but also a patient in this, right? Yes. Yeah. I think you really have to know your study organisms intimately. So what better way to do that than to be a host yourself? It was not done on purpose though. Right. Part of the experience that led to my origin stories

as anologist. Can you tell me a little bit about like, when did you start looking at things that are microscopes? When did you start wondering about how things jump from animals to humans? When did it all happen? Right. So I, I liked biology. I liked being outdoors, but outdoors and biology, that's a huge scope of things you could focus on. And I had no focus until very late in my undergraduate program. I had an opportunity to go to West Africa as a volunteer for the summer. And I worked with communities to talk about primary health care challenges, but using theater. I was really interested in theater and as a teaching tool. And in the daytime, I taught grade five math. And then in the evenings, I taught a theater program. Y'all,

thisologist's journey started because she was a theater nerd. My heart. And like every good citizen, I went to my public health professional and I got all the vaccines and anti-malarial medicines that I needed. And six weeks later, I had to Africa and within two weeks, I caught malaria and everybody said, ah, this malaria is resistant to all those anti-malariads you westerners are prescribing this mosquito-borne parasite. It's known a virus malaria is caused by a parasite that you carry out related to us at the cellular level. It had evolved resistance and continues to evolve resistance very rapidly. So that was my first lesson a things change. Yes. Then I, so I was wrestling with malaria and the fever chills cycle that is a hallmark of that pathogen.

And I picked up amoebic dysentery. Oh, yeah. So amoebic dysentery is caused by a little, also you carry out single celled animal and to me, but histolytica. So it histolytica comes from the fact that it melts your tissues in your colon and your intestine and creates bloody ulcers. And so the first hallmark is you look and you see bloody stool. So I saw a lot of blood in my stool. I got a little concerned. Sure enough, I had amoebic dysentery still wrestling with fever chills from malaria. Oh my gosh. So they shipped me off to a leper colony. Oh, leprosy is caused by a bacterium. So they literally sent you to a leper colony? Only place to get nursing care. I thought that was like a perhaps an exaggeration, but no.

It's true. I was hospitalized in a leper colony. They had nursing care there. And leprosy, even though there's a lot of social stigma around leprosy, it actually is not very infectious. It's transmitted through families. So it can look infectious, just like coronavirus right now is being transmitted through families. But it turns out that it's a combination of long, intimate exposure and genetic predisposition. So it's not very infectious. So it was perfectly fine for me to be hospitalized in a leper colony. It was a very, very casual, pleasant experience, but I saw lots of evidence of people with leprosy or recovering from leprosy and it typically causes your lower extremities to atrophy and drop off eventually. So that was interesting.

That's the understatement of the year. I had also picked up a skin infection while I was there. So we have microbes on our skin, a whole complement of them. And one of them is a staphylococcus bacterium, which basically I had an open wound. I think it was a mosquito bite that I'd scratched or maybe it was a cut on my leg and it got infected with staph and I was getting spiky fevers from staph. So the striation is down my leg and it was all very exciting. So I had a double triple whammy of two eukaryotes and a bacterium and then I was surrounded by a bacterial infection. So I had a lot of time to languish in the hospital. You were a hot mess. And think about my plight and understand that things were out there all the time. They're either in human

communities or non-human communities. They're evolving. They're changing. I came out of it with kind of a new, a deep appreciation and admiration for the incredible diverse world of microorganisms, whether they're viruses or bacteria or eukaryotes and what it was to be a host and what it was to be a parasite and conquer all these barriers. Right. Like a worthy adversary type of respect. They call it an arms race and truly that's maybe not quite fair because they have us beat in terms of being able to evolve more rapidly and have more on the line, right? So Dr. Bennett says that viruses are under a lot of pressure to be really good at being effective parasites. Whereas we have to defend ourselves against all kinds of things, not just these viruses. So we're outsmarted

mostly. Oh, and speaking of smarts, she went on to get her bachelors of science in biology from McGill University and her PhD in zoology from the University of British Columbia. But that was after she recovered from her hands-on experience with pathogens. And how did you keep your spirits up when you were in a leper colony with three diseases? It was incredibly inspiring to see people with leprosy making a positive contribution to their own lives and each other's lives. They called these leper colonies because they're ostracized and they basically work together. They have an economy. They were creating crafts and they were innovating ways of sustainable farming before the rest of the world was even thinking about it. So, you know, caging animals over fish

ponds. So the poop fertilized the fishes and then they have this sort of way of, you know, keeping the whole thing going. So it was a very admirable approach to living with a disease. Yeah. And then while I was in the leper colony, there was an attempted coup. Ibogabad. This was in Liberia in 1989. So it was the first harbinger of the 1991 civil war. So I was there. I heard all the gunshots, machine gunfire. I'm Canadian, so I don't have deep experience with firearms anyway. It was on such an intense scale that it was incredible. And it was while I was in the leper colony that I thought I was almost thankful for being there. Thankful for being sick and in a leper colony with all the stigma that implies and they basically avoided

us entirely. Went through the village where it was. Definitely there were deaths and other atrocities of war and we were completely isolated and protected from that. I'm never complaining about anything again ever. Parasites saved my life. Oh my God. And now when it comes to viruses, is a virus a parasite? What is a virus? What does it look like? What are we dealing with? So I consider the term parasite, and many do, as more of a way of life than it is a particular branch of the tree of life. Okay. Because parasite literally means to dine at another's table. It comes from a Greek word. So it's really a way of making your way in the world and it's evolved independently across many, many different groups of living organisms. Bacteria can be parasitic,

viruses can be parasitic, eukaryotes, and then across the tree of life, many different kinds of eukaryotes can be parasitic from single-celled organisms like Giardia, Orantamoeba, or Plasmodium, which causes malaria, all the way to nematodes and tapeworms and flatworms and all those great wormy stuff. So it's a way of life. It's a lifestyle choice. Now, arguably many folks do not classify viruses themselves as living organisms because they kind of cheat and use the host cellular machinery to metabolize is what everyone's dickering about. But I consider them a life form. What are the basic components of a virus and what's the difference between like an RNA virus? When you've got this spiky little glob coming to take over your life, what is it equipped with?

So viruses are fairly simplified, but they're very diverse and they're not even one single lineage. So when we talk about viruses, they probably arose multiple times or if they didn't and if they evolved from the same ancestor, we can't track it back far enough in time to say one way or the other. They have a fairly simple structure and it depends on which group of viruses you're talking about. The viruses I work on have a simple, what we call a nucleocapsid, sort of like a lipid bilayer membrane with proteins that stick off of it and that membrane structure contains the genetic information of the virus and then that's it. So genetic information, some kind of coding and then some proteins that stick off the end in the case of viruses that infect eukaryotes,

they use these proteins to bind to the host cell and then fuse into the host cell, pass the host membrane into the cellular body of the host cell and then that's where they pick up all these other functions they need. They co-op the host genome to make the building blocks that they need to replicate their genome. So imagine a double layer outside that has all these very fetching protein accessories that just stick onto your cells, just bust into them and then hack your coding to make more of itself. It's slick, also impolite. And then depending on the kind of genome and that too is very diverse across the different viral groups. So there are viruses with double-stranded DNA genomes like ours and there are viruses with single-stranded RNA genomes

like the new novel coronavirus and the mosquito-borne viruses I study and the flaviviridae family which includes dengue and zika. Talking a little bit about the novel coronavirus, why is it called the novel coronavirus? Why is it COVID-19? And how long have we even had an inkling that it existed? So it's gotten a new name now. We got all on the same page and we are calling it the name officially is SARS Coronavirus 2. A sequel. Okay.

So it's SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Virus, so coronavirus C.O.V. And there was a SARS coronavirus. It emerged in late 2002-2003 in Hong Kong via a wet market similar to this situation. And it's about 80% related to this coronavirus. So that's why we're calling it SARS Coronavirus 2. It has even closer relatives in known viruses that are out there in 2015-2017. Some of those viruses are up to 96% related to this virus. So in theory we've known about this particular virus or at least it's very, very close relatives since 2015 maybe even or 2017. But we didn't know about this specific virus until it was first documented in China in the city of Wuhan and associated with a case cluster around a market, a wholesale,

it's called a seafood market, Hunan Seafood, wholesale seafood market, but it sells lots of other different kinds of things including live animals, wild and domesticated animals. So it's a very, it's got lots of different potential bridge vectors, a bridge animals that could have brought the virus from a bat reservoir to humans, but we don't know. And that case cluster was right around the end of December, December 30th, 2019. So the disease that this is causing, it's called coronavirus disease. So the name of that is called COVID-19. So that's where COVID-19 comes from. Oh, got it for the year. Okay. For the year and for the disease. So it's just like HIV is human immunodeficiency virus. Oh, got it. And the disease is AIDS. So same thing. HIV

virus, AIDS is the disease, SARS-CoV-2 is the virus, COVID-19 is the disease. Oh, that makes so much sense. Yeah. Okay. So COVID-19, corona viral disease from 2019, COVID-19. Also after doing a chiropterology episode, I know that bats get a lot of flak. They take a lot of guano from us. And then how do they know that it wasn't from a snake that a bat ate or do they know for sure that it was the bats? Because the bats are so beleaguered when it comes to infectious diseases. So for bats, it depends actually bats are hit way harder by fungi and with viruses, maybe it depends. So the way right now, all we know is based on the genetic information that the virus we're collecting now shares with viruses that were collected from other bats. There was also

viruses that were collected kind of accidentally from a survey of other animals. And in this case, it was a pangolin. And we call it metagenomic because people were characterizing the entire genetic soup without maybe looking for this in particular. Out there in nature, there have been from independently from bats and from pangolins sequences that look similar to this virus that was collected from humans. But there's not been a direct link to any particular animal in the market that could have been the bridge vector or even any particular bat in the market that could have been linked to this emergence event. So it's all being done using circumstantial evidence of the actual genetic relationship of the virus. And that's different from SARS. In SARS,

they actually went and sampled specimens in the market and were able to draw a direct link. So we're not there yet. We're using the genetic information in the virus to say this is what it is. Okay. So what does one do on a Saturday morning? Hop on the horn with your favorite bat expert. So I dialed up the bat phone where chiroptorologist and bat conservationist Dr. Merlin Tuttle of MerlinTuttle.org was standing by. I wanted to get obviously your opinion and your expertise on coronavirus and how the bat conservation community is kind of dealing with rumors and just about bats being in the spotlight in a negative way. We're deeply concerned. I've had emergency requests from Malaysia, China, and Myanmar

all just in the last couple of days trying to head off eradication of bats. I'm sure that your bat line, your bat phone is probably pretty overwhelmed right now, right? We're getting contact from all over the world. It's a huge setback for conservation of bats worldwide. Now whether some of these coronaviruses and other animals first evolved in bats doesn't seem to me to be overly relevant to the current situation. The current situation involves eating, you know, the first hypotheses were that it came from eating cobras or crate snakes. Then it was pointed to pangolins and I even read one paper where they said but they weren't going to go further with testing pangolins which had a 99% match. They found anywhere from about

80% to 96% genomic match with bats. That's really pretty meaningless given that we're 96% genomically identical to chimpanzees and I don't think anybody going on a date is worried about whether their dates can turn out to be a chimpanzee. It's very true. Even on tinder you don't know what you're going to get but you're probably not going to get a chimpanzee. You know, all life on earth is related at some point. What we know is that we have searched bats far more intensely than other animals because their virologists dream come true. You can set a net or trap in front of a cave with thousands of bats in it and have all you can handle in terms of sampling in minutes. They're quick and easy to handle. By comparison, how would you like to go

out and try to get 30 cobras for your sample or 30 hyenas? I mean, you know, most of the other animals are hardly being looked at relative to bats. Bats make absolutely superb scapegoats. They are little understood to begin with and combine and match them with viruses which are little understood and you know, the only viruses people know about are the ones that kill us. We have more viruses in our bodies than we have cells. People fear they rarely tolerate and often kill. Every animal on earth carries viruses that could potentially be harmful. There is no animal on earth more dangerous than our fellow humans. Yet we're fingering scapegoats to seemingly avoid admission of where the real problems are. So, researchers think that while it may have been

hanging out in bats for a long while, it wasn't until humans came in contact with perhaps a pangolin which is an animal that looks like kind of a cross between an ant eater and some wind chimes made of seashells. But they're critically endangered in some areas because they're the world's most trafficked mammal. They're prized for their meat and the medicinal properties of their scales. So, humans tend to come in contact with these intermediate hosts like camels and pangolins and civets when we're catching and eating them. So, the finger kind of points back to us as a species. And as long as we're talking about finger pointing, during a talk Dr. Bennett gave at the Cal Academy, she made another great point about the xenophobia that can spike during an outbreak. And she

reminds us that these pandemics come from all corners of the globe, from all kinds of animals. Our common flu has killed by CDC estimations between 12,000 and 30,000 people in the U.S. just since October 2019. And the 2009 H1N1's wine flu, which came from pigs in North America, infected 11 to 21 percent of the global population killing half a million people. MERS, a.k.a. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a.k.a. camel flu, can be transmitted through contact with camels or by ingesting unpasteurized camel milk and it's a highly dangerous disease to those with comorbidities. SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, initially came on the scene in 2002 and though the mortality rate was high, there were just over 8,000 cases resulting in

774 deaths. So, influenza's can be much more threatening. Now, SARS and MERS are both coronaviruses, which are round, spiky things. They're almost an adorable pestilence. And I've seen pictures of it. It looks like a coosh ball, an evil, evil coosh ball, or like a dog toy. Bad intentions. Just trying to live its life. I know it's just trying to do its hustle. We just don't really like it. It's okay. I mean, congrats for being so successful, so fast, but we don't like it. What exactly is it and how is it different from other coronaviruses? Because is a cold a coronavirus, technically? No. Okay. Well, not necessarily, I should say. So, when we refer to the common cold, there's actually

tons of things that can cause common cold. Yeah. So, there are a group of viruses called rhino viruses that cause common cold-like symptoms. There are two coronaviruses that jumped into humans from animal reservoirs that are in a different group of coronaviruses that, I think, up to 10 to 20% of common colds, maybe 30, are due to these human coronaviruses, but they're in a completely different cluster than these coronaviruses that include MERS and SARS and SARS-2 now. So, those are called these. This other group is called the beta coronaviruses, and they are not typically what we think of as common cold, like symptoms. Common cold is usually upper respiratory with nasopharyngeal and throat and a lot of blowing your nose and sneezing,

whereas this virus, as well as SARS-1, are more associated with MERS, in fact, with pneumonia-like symptoms. So, they're infecting the lower respiratory tract. Got it. So, the same with SARS-2 is that it seems to be associated with mostly lower respiratory and that comes with certain pathogenic implications, because that's where you would get sort of pneumonia-like symptoms associated with the lower respiratory tract. Okay. So, most of this interview with Dr. Bennett took place in an office, but afterward, I thought of a few more questions. So, I met up with her in the planetarium at the Cal Academy that evening after her talk and before our museum nightlife panel to ask her, just a few more things. So, this virus infects respiratory tissue. So, it's mostly

lung tissue, lower respiratory tissue, and then sometimes upper respiratory. So, basically, the symptoms are associated with a dry cough, fever. Fever is the most common symptom. 88% of all sick people develop fever, and it's not a particularly high fever, so like 100.4 degrees and up. So, people should check their temperature. Dry cough, fatigue, kind of like when you get the flu, you feel body ache and fatigue, and then shortness of breath. And shortness of breath, we used to think was the most common symptom up there with fever as the most most common symptom, but it's maybe about 20% of people develop shortness of breath. Okay. I heard that COVID-19 can cause your lungs to fill up with blood, or is that just a rumor? So, the people that

are really getting this disease very severely are getting pneumonia. So, anything that infects your lower respiratory tract can eventually result in pneumonia, and that's basically an inflammatory response of your body that fills your lungs up with fluid. Fluid that your body produces to fight infection, but it kind of goes crazy. It's what we call a cytokine storm. So, there are many kinds of pneumonia. It's basically inflammation of the lungs. It can be caused by bacteria, different kinds of bacteria. This is definitely consistent with viral pneumonia, which is really mostly associated with this sort of overwhelming cytokine response. So, it's a big immune response that you're getting. If you're coughing a lot, and you're trying to get rid of the fluid in your

lungs, probably blood might be in the sputum, but in general, it's pneumonia. Okay, side note. Cytokines are proteins made by your immune system, and they do all kinds of signaling to moderate inflammation and immunity. When those cytokines go a little hogwild, it can affect the entire body, doing really intense damage to lungs and the liver and the kidneys. And so, a cytokine storm can cause multiple organ failure. So, just think about that when you feel too lazy to wash your hands well, or when you just can't resist touching your face. Multiple organ failure versus using some soap. Soap it is. Okay, but now back to the structure of the actual virus. It's a coronavirus because of these spike proteins that prickle off of the...

I mentioned that the viruses have this containing nucleic capsid, the genomes inside, and then sticking off of this nucleic capsid are proteins that are really important to help the virus bind to the host cell and then fuse. So, what they have to do is they bind, and then they trick the host cell into basically engulfing it. It's called phagocytosis, and they engulf it into an internal bubble inside the cell called an endosome. And then once it's enclosed in the cell, it needs to punch through the host cell membrane to get into the cytoplasm of the cell and do its thing. Okay. And so, it uses proteins to both bind to the cell, and then once it gets engulfed, it uses proteins to tunnel, to basically open up a gateway, fuse and pump itself in.

And so, the spike protein is very important in SARS coronavirus 2, as well as SARS coronavirus 1, the original, for binding to the host cell. So, these proteins determine what we call the host tropism, the kind of host it can bind to, and then the kind of cells within that host they can move into. So, they're very important, and they give it this sort of beautiful halo effect because these spike proteins kind of stick out like a funny crown. Yeah. And that's where the corona comes from. And that's where the corona comes from. And now, I've seen the like exponential growth curves, and have you seen that animated graph

where they're all just kind of cruising along, and then you see coronavirus, and you just see it on this upward trajectory that is horrifying. Why is it so scary, and so successful, so fast? So, there's a lot of unanswered questions. We know that its spike protein does differ from SARS, the first SARS. The first SARS was different in that it caused a higher rate of mortality, so case fatality rate was around 10%, but it didn't transmit quite as rapidly. You would get infected with the virus, and then it might take four to five days to develop symptoms. We call that the incubation period, and then for days after that, another four to five days, you wouldn't be able to transmit, and then you'd only start to transmit after you'd been sick.

So, it made SARS, the first SARS, easy to contain, even though it was scary deadly. So, this virus is not as deadly. It's rolling it out around, the estimates vary depending on whether it's in a population of older people with comorbidities or other health challenges, but it's coming in right around 3%, plus or minus. But what about conflicting reports that say that danger is no big deal, less than a fraction of a percent, versus others that put the death rates much higher? Who's lying to us, and what do they want out of it? Is nobody lying? Is everybody lying? Well, what we're saying, so there are two words being used here. One is mortality, and one is case fatality rate. So, we don't know how many

people have the virus. So, if you divided the number of deaths by all the unknown people that could have it, then yeah, maybe the mortality rate would be pretty low. But what we're saying is it's about that SARS had a one in one in ten died, that was the case fatality rate. And so, with SARS coronavirus 2, COVID-19, the case fatality rate, and we're talking about COVID-19, the disease now, that is 3.4%. So, that's when you know it's a case, what's the chances of it dying? So, you have to be really careful what you divide it by, the deaths by the total number of known cases, or the total number of potential infections. And that's a really, really hard number to get a handle on, because unlike SARS-1, where you had your incubation period, and then you had your symptomatic

period, and then you could transmit with SARS-2, you could start transmitting right away, even before you have any symptoms, or at least we think so, we don't know exactly when, but your asymptomatic period can last, or incubation period can last up to two weeks, on average seven, six, seven days, but up to two weeks. And as far as we know, people can transmit before they're symptomatic. So, that means it's a lot harder to get a handle on. So, when people report cases, that could be as long as 14 days after they've been capable of transmitting to other people. So, the estimate of the reproductive rate of the virus is pretty high, that it's varying from any one individual could infect two others, up to four others, and in some places in closed settings, like nursing homes,

or cruise ships, the reproductive rate of the virus has been even higher, way higher. So, on the order of measles higher, which has a reproductive rate of 12 to 18. Okay, so quick recap. The reproductive rate means how many other folks an infected person could spread it to. So, spreading an airborne disease to 12 to 18 others, yeah, there's a reason that measles vaccines are a good idea. Now, the flu's reproduction rate is about 1.3, meaning if you've got it, you'll give it to about 1.3 people, and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated at about 2.2, but it's still pretty early. Right now, as of March 9, 2020, there have been 113,000 reported cases of COVID-19, and about half of those, 62,000, are fully recovered. 3,895 people have died.

So, remember, that rate of reproduction for SARS-CoV-2 can vary a lot, depending on the close quarters, and some folks are in living situations that put them at greater risk. So, people are concerned because we don't know how many infections are out there that could be transmitting, and when we report cases, we're really only getting the tip of the iceberg. We don't know how big the base of the iceberg is. So, that's why we're trying to prepare ourselves for, you describe the epidemic curve. In China, we know we can look back and trace the epidemic curve. We know that it started, that the low levels of cases started in the end of December. We actually can use genetic information to predict the origins of that human form, and it's

looking like mid to end of November, that this ancestral virus was around, the one that's causing COVID-19. We started to detect the cases December 30th. We started to see growing cases through January, big boost through Chinese New Year's, and we are peaking through February, and finally, we're hitting the top of the curve, and now, if you look at the cumulative cases, it's starting to level off. And if you're looking at the number of new cases per day, it's starting to go back down the other side. And this whole thing in China, at least, from ramping up to hitting the peak to going down the other side, has taken about two months or so. Two and a half months. So, the big question here in the US is when will we start to hit that curve

and start to really increase exponentially in terms of the number of cases that we detect? And then, how high that curve will go? Will it be as intense as it was in China, or will we use different methodologies to keep it flatter? And if we flatten the curve, will that make the curve last longer? So, if you look at overall COVID-19 cases, the curve starts off small and then goes skyward, and it's still headed skyward. That's overall global. But if you look at just mainland China, where most of the cases have originated, it reached a peak and it's starting to cruise to the right instead of going straight up. So, where can you get COVID-19 data? I'll put links to these sources on next drain and github at alleyward.com slash ology slash virology. But where can you get

COVID-19 itself? And now, where is it? Is it on door handles? Is it on airplane trays? Where is it and how do we not get it? Right. So, this is what we call a virus that transmits by airborne droplets. Okay. There has been some evidence of fecal transmission. So, it has been found in those kinds of body products. What a party. Yeah. But when we say airborne droplets, that basically means that it's in the water droplets that we produce when we sneeze or cough, or if we're rubbing our eyes, nose, and mouth and then depositing or capturing a cough and depositing those on surfaces. So, wherever the droplets land or are put by our hands, for example, is where the virus could be picked up by the next host. So, that's different from something like

measles, which is truly airborne and can actually float in the air as an aerosol. And that's why measles can potentially, if you don't get vaccinated, can be highly, highly transmissible. So, this is not measles. It's not fully aerosolized and airborne. It's probably most likely to infect people through being coughed on directly, have droplets land on you directly, or you pick up the virus from a surface. And then you rub your eyes or rub your nose and it gets into a mucus memory? Yeah, or you hold your hamburger and you take a big bite and your hands have touched the burger. So, it's basically any potential surface that you have touched with your hands or other body part that then you introduce to any of your own

mucus membranes. Warm and moist. When viruses deposit things on surfaces, we call those fomites, F-O-M-I-T-E-S. So, I'm fondly referring to my iPhone as a phoneite. So, you can imagine, right, that potentially I'm handling the phone. I'm putting it down places. Other people might be picking it up like my daughter or something. So, clearly, as a precaution that we can all take is to wash our hands before we use our hands to touch our mucus membranes like our eyes or nose or mouth or food that we're going to put in our mouth. Okay. And cover your cough or sneeze because you don't want to be a spreader. And remember, we could be walking around without symptoms and be spreading the virus. And our phones are disgusting, right? They're disgusting.

Okay. And keyboards and microscopes and doorknobs and elevator buttons. So, avoiding touching any of those really common surfaces is just a great thing. Just a side note, I love how she said common everyday items like keyboards and doorknobs and elevator buttons and phones and microscopes. Is this amazing lady a molecular epidemiologist or what? Okay. So, that is good to know that like it's not that your phone might be disgusting. Like your phone is dirtier than like has more living on it than a toilet seat or something, right? Something insanely. I would not be so. Yeah. Okay. I think that is probably very true. And how long can the virus that causes COVID-19 starts to, how long can it live just hanging

out on your phone, hanging out on a button? So, I actually don't know. And I don't know if I was looking in the published literature for that information and I didn't see a study. I've heard people in the press or maybe casually mentioned different times like 24 hours, 36 hours. With flu, with influenza, it can persist over for 24 hours or more, but it's a totally different virus and it depends on the temperature. So, actually flu does really well. It persists longer when it's cool and dry, which is one of the reasons why influenza does well in dry winters in the temperate zone when we're crowded together indoors and they're living in these cool dry environments. So, we don't know enough about SARS-CoV-2 to really know, but for sure I would not

doubt that it could persist a goodly amount of time, but we don't really know exactly how long that is, at least I don't. Okay, so we're about to get to more common quandaries we're all facing and you know, I usually do your Patreon questions, but I had no idea I was doing this episode until about one minute before. So, I just played it by ear. Also, for each episode we donate to a charity of theologist choosing and this week I went directly to the California Academy of Sciences and the mission of the California Academy of Sciences is to explore, explain and sustain life. They have 1.5 million visitors every year, 46 million scientific specimens and collections. They do scientific research, public engagement, environmental literacy programs and sustainability

education. Plus, it's just a really great fun beautiful museum of science. California Academy of Sciences is awesome. So, a donation goes straight to them thanks to these sponsors. All right, back to what I think would have been your questions. What do you think of the runs on hand sanitizer and hand sanitizer on Amazon being like $200 and you cannot buy a Clorox wipe anywhere? They're all sold out. Have you stocked up? Do you have a bunker full of canned food? What's going on? No, no, no. No, I think just like anything we could potentially get whether it's seasonal flu or coronavirus or rhinovirus, a common cold virus, it's I think plenty to wash your hands

and soap and water is just fine. You don't need an ethanol based hand sanitizer. An ethanol based hand sanitizer doesn't hurt either. I mean, it's not a substitute for washing your hands with soap and water. Washing your hands with soap and water is better, but hand sanitizer is fine, but it's not necessary. If you touch something, just go wash your hands as soon as you can before you touch your mucus memories and you'll be fine. We don't have to carry hand sanitizer in every pocket in every car. You can also make your own disinfectant for surfaces or you can just use soap and water on surfaces. So soap and water on surfaces or any cleaner that's 60% ethanol or more, you can buy rubbing alcohol from, uh-oh, I hope I didn't just start running.

Okay, but heads up, don't use straight rubbing alcohol on your hands or you might cause a skin burn or drying or cracking. Now, some folks are trying to make their own hand sanitizer. They're just going full DIY Pinterest mode using two thirds rubbing alcohol and a third aloe vera gel to moisturize, but experts are like, yo, if you get the concentration wrong or you contaminate it using non-sterile tools to make it, it's not going to be as effective as store-bought, so don't bother. Can I douse my mitts in whiskey, you ask, as long as I'm holed up drinking it, hoping not to die? Well, first off, have some water, my friend. Also, whiskey isn't high enough proof. Either as vodka, Tito's vodka, responsibly discouraged hoarding and tweeted out, per the CDC, hand sanitizer

needs to contain at least 60% alcohol. Tito's handmade vodka is 40% alcohol and therefore does not meet the current recommendation of the CDC. So I'm sorry to say, you cannot fix things by splashing booze on your body. I know, it's disappointing. And you can also make surface cleaner out of bleach. I have a lab here. I disinfect surfaces with 70% ethanol or 10% bleach, but it turns out you could get away with 3% bleach. Wow. A 3% bleach solution. Just make sure you leave things wet. You don't dry them off right away. Because that bleach needs time to break down some... A little time. Yeah. And same with ethanol wipes. So if you're buying wipes, make sure that they're still wet when you're using them. Don't use them until they dry out.

Right. And don't use it and then dry it off with a dirty towel, say. Good point. Let's take a moment to revisit the disinfectiology episode with Dr. Evan Rumberger, who is a bleach chemist at Clorox in Northern California. He has dedicated his career to killing gross stuff that can make us sick. Now, how is bleach disinfecting things? So some research that came out only about a decade ago, zeroed in on the house. And according to a study published in Cell Magazine, the active ingredient in bleach causes proteins in bacteria and viruses to unfold in the same way that a fever would fight an infection. When you spray it first on the counter, you can leave it there to kick some bacterial and viral asses for like five to 10 minutes,

depending on your counter. And what about the smell of bleach? I learned on the lab trip that the more bleach you smell, the more it's kind of busting up cell walls. Is that true? Yeah. That's true. So it's like the bleach, you know, the bleach smell is... Our consumers, a lot of them love it because it's a good indication of coming into a clean, you know, bathroom. I can tell you nothing better than going into, like, at the ballgame and going into the bathroom. And if you smell bleach in there, it's like, okay, okay, we can go in here or in the restaurant. That's a really good side of just knowing how well it works at disinfecting. That smell, it is the smell of the bleach kind of fragmenting up the things that comes in content. That is a little bit of what

you're smelling. That's a nice cue that it's done its thing. It's good to know. So the next time you think, hmm, it smells like bleach in here, think, oh, wow, it smells like a lot of destroyed pathogens and ripped apart viruses, aromatherapy in these trying times. And now back to virologist Dr. Shannon Bennett. And what about symptoms? I know that some people can be asymptomatic. My fear, because I travel a lot, like I was on a plane this morning, I'll be on one tomorrow, my parents are have are immunocompromised. And I'm afraid I'm supposed to see them in like two weeks. And I'm like, what if I pick it up and I don't know and I give it to them? Like, we all know, or not all of us, but a lot of us know that like, those masks aren't doing anything. Like, what do we do? So

I too have an older mother that has asthma. And I certainly wouldn't ever want to give her this. So it's like I said, it's not measles where it's going to fly through the air. But but they're definitely, you know, droplets can travel about six feet. So if you develop symptoms, clearly you would want to avoid contact with them close contact. But before you develop symptoms, if you don't have symptoms, you're not coughing. So you're probably potentially depositing fomites around. So just like we can use good hygiene to protect ourselves, you can also use good hygiene not to transmit. So if you're washing your hands frequently, not only are you not liable to give it to yourself, but if you did touch your face and hands, wash your hands again, wash your hands before you

prepare food. Don't share cups, glasses, straws with your family members. Like we should all not do that right now would be good. And don't cough, cover your coughs or sneezes, even if they're just starting like with a tickle to cut, try to cover. Is it better to have Kleenex with you or to have like a handkerchief? I have a young daughter, 14. And when she was growing up, it was the Batman move, like pull your pull your arm up and sneeze into your elbow or cough into your elbow. There there is some interesting rumors going around about whether the virus can persist on fabric surfaces. So for sure, we know that can persist on hard surfaces. But how does it persist on fabrics? So that I think is still up up for question, if it would persist longer on

a handkerchief or on your sleeve. So maybe the best course is to use a disposable Kleenex, throw it out, wash your hands. Okay, rapid fire, paper towels or hand dryers? So I'm a big fan of paper towels. Got it. What about the internet rumor that SARS-Corona 2 is an escaped bio warfare pathogen from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? They have the same outfit that we have in terms of they have a Chinese version of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chinese CDC, and that the rumor out there, and I don't want to repeat the rumor in case it's propagated, but you know, the rumor was that they might have been involved. Of course, many labs, especially government labs, are going to keep pathogens and cell cultures and different

things to study things. So it's completely plausible that all of the labs around that support us and develop vaccines and drugs have some forms of these things to study. I don't put any stock into the rumor at all and the genetic evidence supports that it's not an engineered virus. PS, if you hear the word recombination in regard to this or other viruses, don't get scared of a term you don't know. It just means that a few viruses can mix up their DNA, co-infecting the same host and exchanging genetic segments. So recombination in SARS-CoV-2 may have been because there were multiple animal hosts, not because someone in China is trying to start the apocalypse. Rumors spread by Rush Limbaugh and info wars Alex Jones,

the letter of whom had a self-described form of psychosis and convinced people that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. Jones stated recently that SARS-CoV-2 is the work of Chinese communists and that it's man-made sentiments that managed to be not only racist, but sexist too. Now Trevor Bedford is a Seattle-based virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and has done amazing work on the genomics of SARS-CoV-2 and he has a thread debunking these conspiracy theories. It's on Twitter. It's definitely worth a read. I'll link it on my website at alleyboard.com slash ologies slash virology and also while you're at it just follow him on Twitter at trvband. And for the health of yourself and the planet, stop following potato

face hate mongers. Speaking of faces, what about masks? So masks, masks are not all equal. There are many kinds of masks out there. There are paper masks that are not not necessarily adequately filtering the air and then there are masks with these little built-in filters and and the rest of the mask is more is less much less permeable and they're called N95s. 95 refers to the amount of air it filters, the amount of particulates that filters out of the air. So N95 means that filters 95% of the particles. So in a healthcare setting where you are in a crowded space and droplets are flying, they are definitely recommending N95s or higher N99s be used by healthcare professionals by people that are in closed spaces where they cannot escape a flying droplet because of this

whole six foot rule and where they're concentrated with and crowded with people. For most of us going about our day to day, we're probably picking the virus up mostly from fomites. A mask is not going to protect you from fomites and this is not measles where it's flying through the air. You're going to know if you're in within six feet of somebody that's spraying droplets. So the mask won't help for fomites unless I guess some people could argue if I'm wearing a mask I'm not touching my face but I bet you if you're wearing a mask you're touching your face even more because you're just in the nosepiece and not only that but people need to understand that all the masks that are available most of them are disposable. That means to use them properly you fit them tight and you

use them once and then you throw them out. So they themselves could become you know fonts of fomite just by collecting the fomites that you're breathing through the air and then you're touching them and so they're not a great idea unless you're in a healthcare setting. Where you will be in very close quarters with direct droplets. And I read that even people who use those in a healthcare setting have to do tests to make sure that it's fitted properly and they're easy to use wrong. They're easy to use wrong, they're easy to use over and over again and they could give you this false sense of security going into a situation when if it hasn't been fitted properly and there

are gaps you're actually pulling in more virus than if you didn't. And then there's not enough for the people who need them for construction work. The last thing we want is for there to be a run on masks and the people that are really exposed not having access to them. Just a side note the US Surgeon General tweeted an exasperated plea that started with seriously people stop buying masks. They're not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients it puts them and our communities at risk. End quote. So what if you bought them when you thought you needed them and now you feel bad

or embarrassed about it? Don't be embarrassed. Just contact a local healthcare provider or ER. Let them know you have clean unused masks to donate. Medshare.org is also taking and redistributing them and I fly a lot. We all know this. And I was on two planes this week for work and I saw a ton of people wearing these vented N95 numbers. It's kind of like a Gucci purse. Once you know what it is, you see them everywhere. Also in researching this episode, guess what all my targeted website ads are for? Yep. Even the New York Times sidebar ads are for N95 masks and hand sanitizers if you've been googling coronavirus a lot. So when it comes to widespread panic, there's really no escaping commerce. Now speaking of escaping, I was supposed

to give a talk at South by Southwest EDU this week, but it was canceled. What do you think about this particular disease being an excuse to stop going to parties? My daughter's like, when are they going to close school? What are they going to close school? So I for one, I'm not changing my social gathering, but I'm being mindful of the social distancing. So the difference is that I am not necessarily shaking hands, hugging, kissing, or sharing a drink with someone like I might do in a party. Like, oh, I'll have a sip. Can I taste your wine or your cocktail? So those things are definitely good things to not do at this time. But I think still at this point, I think social gathering is, we don't have enough indication that the

base of the iceberg is so huge that we should stop gathering socially. What about say trips? Like, I know I'm going to Costa Rica so far, no cases in Costa Rica, but I'm going in a couple months. But one patron one listener who's a friend of mine, Dr. Tegan Wall, she has had a part of a lung removed because of valley fever. And she's planning on going to Hawaii with her 66 year old dad. And she's like, should I not go? I have like a pre-existing lung thing. She's like, am I being paranoid? Yeah, what do you think? Do people keep traveling? I think the first thing she should do is talk to her medical. Yeah, for sure. So I'm not going to say they got her own lungs. But yeah, absolutely. Whenever you travel and you go transit through

airports, you're passing many, many more people from many, many more places and you are potentially exposing yourself to fomites and coughs. And then again, if you're in an airplane, it's not like measles, it's going to be flying around the cabin. But if the person beside you behind you or in front of you is coughing actively, there's that. So again, I think being mindful that if you do travel, you need to be ultra careful about touching your eyes, nose and mouth or food with unwashed hands and distancing yourself and from contact with other humans, direct contact. So I personally am still traveling. I have a wonderful trip planned to do field research in the Maldives at the end of March, March 27th. I'm really,

really hoping that I can go. Really, what I'm saying about that is I'm looking to the CDC and following their travel advisories. So if they have issued a travel advisory against a place and they have issued travel advisories to what they're classifying as level three countries, yes, don't go. I'm not going to go. And you risk if you do go, maybe not being able to get back as readily. Plus, many airlines are canceling some percentage of flights. So looking to the WHO and CDC guidelines for travel advisories based on destination is what I am doing and then using safe personal precautions when I do travel to non-level three locations. Okay. I wonder, do you think that Olympics are going to be next? Well, I think that that is what everybody's talking

about. Yeah, everyone's talking about that. Yeah. So actually, I was just looking at the data in Japan and they still have not hit the top of their curve. Okay. So China has and it's heading down the other side. Japan has not quite. Okay. So depending on how it all rolls, by the time the summer Olympics occur, it could be down the other side, right? And they could be starting to pull up, pull up, pull up. So we have many events here planned at the academy. We're just keeping an eye on the data and not making any premature decisions. And like I said, with diseases, they come in a wave and the wave peaks and then it goes back down again. What causes that drop actually? That's a very good question. Most people assume that all the people in a certain population

that could have gotten it at a certain efficiency that the virus might exhibit, got it. So we're kind of thinking about it as like a herd immunity. Like somehow the population of at risk potentially exposed people is that population isn't large enough to sustain ongoing virus transmission for whatever reason. And there's lots of things that might determine that. In China, it was concentrated in Wuhan. Probably many people that could have been exposed were exposed and the virus is now running out of running rim. Like many kids are not showing symptoms, maybe they're not on the radar. So people that are going to get it that would have showed that they got it is starting to run down. So what we don't know is what the United States

is going to look like. We don't know if we're going to have a bell shaped epidemic curve in a given place or whether it'll be across the whole country. So for example, for sure in Seattle there's definitely a curve going up and coming back down. But it could be that we at a country level stay with these sort of very discreet events like that. And we never as a country go through a curve where the virus never nationally runs out of susceptibles essentially. And quick aside, in case you're like, what's going on in Seattle? Well, the first U.S. case of COVID-19 appeared outside of Seattle when a 35 year old man who had recently traveled to Wuhan China came back with it. And as of this recording, nearly 100 folks have been diagnosed and 18 have

died in the Seattle area, somehow spread to a nursing care facility in Kirkland, Washington, causing the deaths of 13 residents and spreading to a suspected half of its 180 workers. Although the center is having trouble getting ahold of enough testing kits, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has stepped up and donated $100 million to global public health authorities to try and fight COVID-19, starting with trying to make testing kits available to Seattle area residents. So why, you might ask, if you are my parents who just asked me as I was researching, are older folks more at risk for this? And why haven't we seen COVID-19 in kids? So a few theories are that as we age, our immune systems just are not as strong and our inflammatory response may be greater,

causing that cytokine storm that can cause organ problems. So obviously, no one wants to get this and no one wants to give this to anyone. So what do you do if you feel like garbage? Are there even enough testing kits available right now? Not really. Now the CDC recommends, in any case, to call a health care provider immediately and they will assess your symptoms. Also, have a working thermometer available because a low-grade fever is one of those symptoms. Now for mild symptoms, CDC says stay at home and isolate. Don't spread it to your family. And for worsening symptoms, alert your doctors so that if you do come in, they're prepared with the right testing kits and their own precautionary measures. Don't just saunter in to urgent care unannounced,

like a mother-in-law doing a drop by on a Sunday. Give them a heads up first. Also, a healthy immune system is important. So take your vitamin C, stay hydrated with not vodka, get a lot of sleep. You have waited years to have a good excuse to stay in and watch Netflix and nap. You're welcome. Also, if you need a show to watch, can I suggest 100 Humans, which premieres on March 13th? If you're bored, tweet to Netflix and tell them you love it. Also, take care of your immune system. Do you think our immune systems will eventually get hip to it? Or do you think that eventually they'll have a vaccine in a couple of months? Or is it just like wash your hands? The vaccine's not going to come fast enough? Well, two things. One is that

it does take time to develop a vaccine. There are vaccine candidates that are being researched right now. And they look promising. But to get that through drug testing and everything could take months to a year. So stay tuned. Yeah. But the other question too is how effective a vaccine will be. And with influenza, we know that that immunity does wane. It doesn't match anymore and it's not as effective. Whereas with some things like measles, the vaccine's awesome and it lasts decades, right? So it really depends. And viruses are different. And the kind of antibodies they elicit in the human body that could then be leveraged to boost people, give people a vaccine is still completely unknown with this virus. I mean, there's candidates,

but there's not enough information. So a lot of companies are urging workers to telecommute, which I think is a great idea. Personally, I will be doing that as much as possible. And perhaps so should you if your job situation lends itself to that, which is a privilege in and of itself. But so so many people simply cannot afford to take off work and can't telecommute because their job involves being on site to teach or to build something or to serve something or fix something. And for them, it's good to be mindful to try to cut this thing off because some people can't take certain steps to lower their risk. Oh, and if you're wondering if your dog can spread it to you or others, the World Health Organization says nah, but you should wash your

hands after petting animals anyway. They said nothing about telling your animals how beautiful they are from across the room, which I've been doing. Okay, you know what? Let's try to lighten this up a little. The movie Contagion, yes or no? Any virus movies that you actually like? I actually kind of like Outbreak. It's a lot cornier, but I love Dustin Hoffman. Okay. So I was like, I think those are all really super fun. Jared was being an angel and helping me as I was scrambling to put this episode together, and this outbreak clip made him rip off his headphones and tell me I needed to contact my favorite disasterologist, Dr. Samantha Montano, from the Disasterology episode immediately.

Now, it was 10 p.m. her time on a Sunday. I gently texted her, and she was up and down to chat on the phone because as her Twitter bio states, she's not just a disasterologist. She's a cool disasterologist. So I asked her, what the hell should we do? Should we panic? Okay, Dr. Montano, thank you so much for talking to me. You're welcome. In this COVID-19 fear and scare and threat, what do you suggest that people know or do? Sure. So the first thing that I recommend is that folks listen to the information being put out by their local public health and emergency management officials. They'll be the agencies that have the most up-to-date information for your specific area, and so following their advice is your best bet. Where do people find their local emergency

management officials? Good question. So the best thing to do is to just go to Google and search the name of your city, town, or county with emergency management and or public health, and you should have an agency come up. They're all named slightly different. Okay. So you kind of have to just search around for it. But once you find their websites, you should be able to find a place to sign up for email or text alerts or at least their social media so you can follow them on there. I did this for Los Angeles side note, and it pulled up the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the California Department of Public Health, the CDC, the World Health Organization. Sweet. So think locally first. See what's happening nearby. Okay. And should we be taking this as

the apocalypse is coming, or is this just a new disease? And so people are just being very precautious. Well, I would definitely not say it is the apocalypse, fortunately. But this is something that needs to be taken very seriously. So remember that kind of for the majority of people that are taking precautions, they're doing so not for yourself, but rather for the people around you who are at a higher risk, people who have, you know, certain chronic illnesses or are elderly and have those higher risks. We want to make sure that we're not doing anything to spread this around to them. So you're not a diva or high maintenance if you're being extra precautious. You're just being kind of kind and compassionate and empathetic to others.

Yes, absolutely. Are guys going to start washing their hands? Do you think? I would really hope so. That's been one thing that has been quite illuminating. How many guys on Twitter are like, Oh yeah, a lot of guys just cruise right out of the bathroom without washing their hands. How about that? Yeah, it's disgusting. And then what about kind of the a little bit of the panic or the fear? What should what should people do emotionally? Yeah, so I think the most important thing is to just remember to be kind to each other. There's a lot of really confusing and conflicting information flying around. And this is very genuinely scary for a lot of people. And so, you know, I think we want to be careful when we see

people taking certain actions that to us may seem slightly irrational or may seem like they're making a decision out of panic. It's important to remember that we don't necessarily know their individual situation. We don't understand, you know, who they're living with at home, who may be high risk, what particular needs their family may have. And so we want to be kind of careful about how we're interpreting some behaviors that kind of from the outside or with more information or more accurate information may seem irrational are actually relatively rational reactions for them. That's such a good point because you don't know if someone's immunocompromised or if they're caring for someone who is. And so don't judge people for being cautious. Exactly. How do you feel about

people who are stockpiling canned food and water and Purell? Do you think there's a need to get ready for maybe mandatory quarantines or what should we do? Yeah, so I think the general consensus coming out of official agencies is that there is a recommendation that folks have a supply of food at their homes. The kind of general consensus seems to be two weeks worth that, again, is gonna kind of look different for different people's situations. I think really the idea with that is if you are in a position where you need to stay home for multiple weeks and it's not safe for you to leave your house, that you are able to feed yourself. That said, you know, emergency managers on a daily basis recommend that you have multiple days worth of food and

water in your house for any disaster that may occur. So that's pretty standard advice. If you didn't already have that, that might be why you're heading out to get it now. Right, exactly. What about big events being canceled or postponed? I know that in some countries, weddings are being postponed or banned, gatherings of over a thousand people, I know South by Southwest just canceled. Good call, do you think? It really depends on where you are. It's a situation where we don't necessarily have all of the data that we would ideally want to be able to make the most informed decisions. This happens a lot during disasters and so officials are needing to make decisions kind

of based on the best information that they have. Presumably they're making those decisions based on information that they've been given by local public health officials. And so that's, you know, a good approach. Yeah. Oh, that's so smart and helpful. I don't know about you, but I've had some stuff get canceled that I've been like, yes, I can stay home. That's funny. I'm actually going to a conference tomorrow in Hawaii and it has not been canceled. And it's been very shocking, I thought for sure it would be. I hope you have some hand wipes. Yes, I do. Okay, good. Well, I hope you fly safe, send updates from Paradise. I will do. All right, Dr. Montano, thank you so much. Wash your hands. You too. Okay, Dr. Shannon Bennett had to jet, so we wrapped it up. Oh,

and I know you got to go to a next meeting. I'll ask you the last two questions I always ask. Worst thing about your job, crappiest thing about it, I know that you, I'm asking this of someone who has had malaria and dysentery in a leprechaun during a war, but what's the worst thing about your job? It can be anything. So, so I'm actually playing a dual role right now. I'm doing, I'm the chief of science at the Academy, as well as an oligest, virologist and molecular epidemiologist. And so I would say that the administrative parts of my jobs, like the, the, and, and even as an oligest, you have these administrative duties, like writing reports and writing grants. That can, that is, I do find tedious. Yeah. But doing the actual research, the field work,

so at the administrative part of it is a little painful. That's what I like the least. So amazing that you could have dysentery as part of your job, but the paperwork is worse. I get it. I get it. I mean, you could get dysentery from anything, really. That's convenient. Oh my God, what's your favorite thing about what you do? So that exactly the adventure of going out into the field, I love that part. I just love seeing new places and seeing new people and I, the feeling of discovery that I might, you know, catch a, catch a mosquito that contains a droplet of blood that it took from some obscure animal in nature that might have the secret to a new virus that I could discover is so exciting.

And we've discovered new viruses and it's really incredible. And, and then bringing that, that secret information back into the lab and cracking open the genome and solving it and doing the analysis and looking at the family tree of these viruses and how they relate to each other is my absolute favorite thing ever. Thank you so, so much for doing this. So in essence, just wash your hands, calm down a little bit, right? Wash your hands, social distance, stay home if you're sick. Like a lot of people we're in this culture where we think, I will just tough it out. Oh, I won't affect anybody. I'll just go to work anyway. But this is not the time to be tough. Right. Just stay home if you're sick. Got it. We'll do. Thank you, doctor.

Thank you so much for doing this. So folks, this is potentially very serious. Not gonna lie to you. But it can be potentially contained faster, not with panic. Panic never saved anyone. But preparedness, conscientiousness, compassion, empathy, and hand washing have saved lives. And as someone who has loved ones, who are immunocompromised, I'm hoping people stay home when they can. We all just do our best to hunker down and let this thing pass over us with a curve that doesn't look like a Six Flags attraction. I myself will be laying low more than I usually do. And what did we learn? Ask smart people stupid questions and don't touch them or your face. Don't touch their face either. Now, Dr. Shannon Bennett is on Twitter and Instagram

at Microbe Explorer. And we are at oligies on both. I'm at Allie Ward with one L on both. Again, also 100 Humans, premieres on Netflix March 13th. We've been working on the show for a couple years and Sammy Obeyed and Zaneb Johnson, my co-hosts and comedians are great and wonderful and you will love them. And I hope it gets you through some self-imposed isolation for safety. Now, links to all the good stuff we talked about will be at alleyward.com slash oligies slash virology. And I'm going to put that link in the show notes. And oligies merch is available at oligiesmerch.com. Thank you, Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for managing that. They also have a comedy podcast called You Are That, which is great. Aaron Talbert admins the oligies podcast

Facebook group. Thank you, Emily White and all the volunteer oligies transcribers for keeping these episodes accessible. Transcripts are available. I'll put a link in the show notes where you can get transcripts and bleeped episodes for kids in the show notes for free. If you ever need to hire a transcriptionist, email hireemilywhite at gmail.com. She is incredible. Thank you to assistant editor Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media and the podcast My Good Bad Brain for helping put all these clips together. And of course, huge thanks to editor Stephen Ray Morris of the Dino podcast, See Jurassic Right, and the kitty-themed percast for stitching it all together like one big sloppy genome Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And if you stick around to the end of the

show, you know I tell you a secret. This week's secret is that I have seen a lady walk out of the bathroom maybe twice in my life without washing her hands. I've witnessed this honestly maybe twice and both times it was like seeing a ghost. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was like, she's cruise right out of here. Not even any water on her paws. And I went back to my table to restaurant. I told everyone. So this entire COVID-19 situation has truly alerted me to how much weird, sad, machismo prevents boys from washing their hands. So boys, we love you. Don't let it kill you. We just respectfully ask you to please wash your mitts. As our friends, the doctors, errands, Welch and Almond Nupdike from this podcast will kill you. Say wash your

hands, you filthy animals. Also, I want you to know that if you eat a lot of goat yogurt, sometimes your pits smell like goats the next day. It's so weird. Has that ever happened to you? But goat yogurt's so good. Okay, bye-bye.