Science Friday - At COP29, The World’s Top Polluters Are No-Shows | Walking Pneumonia Is Spiking

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Leaders from the top-polluting countries, like the US and China, aren’t showing up to the UN’s big climate conference in Azerbaijan. And, walking pneumonia typically affects school-age kids, but the CDC reports a rise in cases in children aged 2-4.At COP29, The World’s Top Polluters Are No-ShowsThe United Nations’ annual international climate conference, COP29, got underway this week in Baku, Azerbaijan. Leaders from around the world come together at this conference to hammer out deals between nations to lower emissions and coordinate climate change-related financial efforts.And a big focus this year was to negotiate a deal for wealthier countries to financially compensate developing nations who’ve experienced climate-change related damage. The only problem is that world leaders from the top-polluting countries, like the US and China, aren’t even showing up.Ira Flatow is joined by Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, to catch up on this and other science stories of the week, including new data on rising alcohol consumption, why Voyager 2 got an inaccurate snapshot of Uranus in the 1980s, and why the world’s largest organism might also be its oldest.Walking Pneumonia Is Spiking. Here’s How To Stay SafeLast month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out a report outlining a significant spike in Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections, better known as walking pneumonia. This respiratory illness is caused by bacteria spread through respiratory droplets, and symptoms usually mimic the common cold. It’s pretty common, with about 2 million infections happening each year, mostly in school-age kids. This year’s spike, which started in the spring, is a little different: There’s been a significant increase in kids aged 2 to 4 and it is now the new leading cause of pneumonia for that group.Dr. Preeti Sharma, pediatric pulmonologist at Children’s Heath in Dallas, knows what it’s like to have a child with mycoplasma pneumonia. Her daughter came home with the illness in the spring. What she thought was a typical cold turned into a deep and lingering cough: a telltale sign of walking pneumonia.Dr. Sharma, who is also an associate professor at UT Southwestern, joins Ira Flatow to discuss this year’s Mycoplasma pneumoniae spike, the best treatments, and how to keep your family healthy this holiday season. Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Why is walking pneumonia spiking in young kids? We have an age of children who didn't get exposed to as many illnesses. Their immune systems are still getting regulated to all the things they're exposed to. It's Friday, November 15th. There's a little breeze in the air, and it must be because today is Science Friday. I'm SciFRI producer Kathleen Davis. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out a report saying, mycoplasma pneumonia, better known as walking pneumonia, has been spiking this year.

It's not uncommon for school-age kids to get this respiratory illness, but what is unusual is that this spike is the greatest among little kids, age two to four. So what can we do to protect our little ones and ourselves, especially as the holiday season is right around the corner? We'll get to that story in just a bit, but first here's Ira Flato with the biggest stories in science this week. The UN's International Climate Conference, known as COP 29, got underway this week in Azerbaijan. We've talked about this conference on the show before, where leaders from around the world come together to find ways to lower emissions and coordinate financial efforts. And a big focus this year was to negotiate a deal for wealthier countries to financially compensate developing

nations who've gone through climate change-related damage. The only problem is that world leaders from the top polluting countries like the U.S. and China aren't showing up. Here to explain more and give us an update on other science stories from this week is Umer Ifan, senior correspondent at Vox based in Washington, D.C. Welcome back, U.S. Thanks for having me back. So what's going on with COP 29 this year? Why aren't the U.S. and China in the room where it happens? Well, as you noted, it is getting off to a subdued start. Part of it is, just that I think expectations are a bit lower for this conference, that while others had really high agenda items, this one does seem to be a little bit more in the weeds, but there are also

a whole lot of other world events going on that other leaders are distracted by. Next week, the G20 summit where the top 20 largest economies in the world are supposed to meet in Brazil, and so many world leaders have decided to prioritize that. The United States, as you may recall, just also went through a presidential election where we're likely to see some big changes in our international climate policy. And so this has been something of a lower profile event for a lot of diplomats. Yeah. Yeah. Can you remind us of the types of deals made at past conferences? Right. Well, this is where, as you noted, where countries kind of hash out the details of their plans to address climate change. So like the big things were laying out commitments that basically

going out and publicly putting a stake down and saying that this is exactly what we plan to do to mitigate climate change. Here's how we plan to do it. Here's how much we're going to invest. And that sort of creates this sort of public accountability measure. And then from there, what countries also do is come up with ways with how they're going to pay for it, pay for their own mitigation measures, but also to help the countries that contributed the least to climate change, the ones who are the low emitters, but are also already facing the effects of rising temperatures, sea level rise, and so on. This. This, latter part, the money aspect of it has always been a really thorny discussion topic. And this

year, at this year's cop, they struggled just to get the agenda agreed to because they were going to talk so much about money. And they finally got that through, but it's likely to be something that they're going to be arguing about for much of the conference as it stretches through next week. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on to space news. Something really cool. Scientists learned that we probably got an inaccurate picture of Uranus when Voyager 2 flew past it in 1986. What's that about? Right. When Voyager 2 was passing the planet, it got a really strange snapshot of the planet. It noticed that the protective magnetic field around Uranus was actually devoid of plasma and was much smaller than it was expected to be when it's found around other planets. And so scientists for a long time were very puzzled.

by this, that what is it about Uranus that leads to these strange electromagnetic phenomenon that's different from other planets? But this week, scientists released a study that found that we actually caught the planet with your Voyager 2 at a very unique time in its history. And it was during what they said was a big increase in solar activity. The planet was actually at that moment getting walloped by wind from the sun, basically a phenomenon, what's called a co-rotating interaction region. This plasma from the the sun, this burst of activity was sweeping out into space and it was hammering the magnetosphere around of Uranus. And that led to the depletion of plasma around the planet. And it was pretty

surprising, like that scientists had not considered that this mechanism was at work before. Yeah, so I guess next time we do a quick flyby of a planet, they're going to have to pay a little more attention to what the sun's doing at that time. Exactly. Yes, NASA is planning to launch another spacecraft in 2032 towards Uranus. And Also, as they steady other planets, they're going to have to keep in mind that anytime they take a snapshot, that it's just a snapshot in time, and that planets can actually undergo some pretty big changes very quickly. Yeah, that's what science is all about, isn't it? Yeah, learning the hard way. Yeah, that snapshot in time.

Okay, next we've got a bit of a worrying statistic, and I mean alcohol consumption is up this year. It seems like that side effect from COVID is still sticking around, perhaps? That does seem to be the case that, you know, in the United States, we saw a fairly moderate decline in alcohol consumption throughout much of the 20th century. Then we saw a slight uptick starting to begin in the 90s. And then at the start of COVID, there was a pretty big spike in alcohol consumption. The rate of alcohol-related deaths in 2020 had risen almost 25 percent compared to the year before. That's for what scientists think is for a lot of the obvious reasons. people were cooped up at home, people had lost their jobs, and people were just drinking to cope with the stress.

But since a lot of the pandemic restrictions have lifted, that high level of alcohol consumption has remained and has in fact continued to climb upwards. We've seen in past periods of intense stress, like after 9-11 or after hurricanes like Katrina, we saw alcohol consumption go up and then go back down. But the sustained level of high consumption here is a bit worrying. And scientists are trying to kind of tease apart why. one idea is that alcohol is in fact addictive, that high levels of consumption can lead to persistent levels of consumption. But there may be other factors as well that things like access to behavioral health services may have gone down during the pandemic and may never have been restored. And so a lot of people who are trying to curb their own alcohol use have not found the resources that they need to be able to do so. Gotcha.

For our next story, a team of scientists found Amber in one of my favorite places, Antarctica. It seems like the last place you'd find Amber, right? Well, yeah. I mean, typically when we study the past in Antarctica, scientists look at ice cores and they look at sediment samples. But while looking at a sediment core, they found about 3,000 feet below the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica. They found a chunk of amber. And Amber is a really interesting way to get a snapshot into the past because not only does it trap air and particles, it tends to trap pieces of living organisms. and sometimes even entire living organisms. So it gives you a really interesting window into

what was alive during that period of time. Now, this chunk of amber was dated to roughly 90 million years ago. So this is during the Cretaceous period. So this is when dinosaurs were on the earth, but also when the continents were in slightly different positions. Parts of Antarctica were further north. But that doesn't necessarily explain why there were trees there on their own. Now, we do see evidence that Antarctica had forests before, but it was also still very far south. And what scientists theorize is that part of the mechanism here is that the forest actually helped the continent absorb more heat. You know, ice tends to reflect sunlight back into space and keep things cool. But this layer of forest cover actually kind of reverse that trend and helped generate its own ecosystem that

kept it viable for forest growth. Wow, that is interesting. I remember when they found coal at Antarctica a while back. Yeah, it turns out that it was like a lot more biologically productive than it looks right now and may have looked very different. It wasn't always this frozen, you know, landscape that we see today. Continental drift. All right, sticking with some cool nature finds, it looks like the world's largest organism might also be its oldest. How big, how old are we talking about here? Right. This is a organism called Pando. It is a quake, Aspen. This is actually not a tree, but a system of trees that are genetically identical. It spans more than 100 acres in Utah. It reproduces through cloning itself. And while at the surface,

it looks like 47,000 distinct trees. Below the ground, it's actually interconnected. And for a long time, scientists have said that this is basically considered to be the world's largest organism. It's also the heaviest. And now they have evidence that it's also the oldest. Because it reproduces by making shoots of itself. Looking at the tree rings themselves doesn't tell the whole story because some of those trees are going to be much younger, some are going to be much older. And so what scientists did was they investigated a lakebed near Pando and they found pollen there in the soil sediment samples and looked at samples going back up to 60,000 years. And they found that Pando might actually be about 16,000 years old, basically around the end of the last ice age when

glaciers began to retreat in that area. Wow. So it's not like if you go there, you see sort of a forest, but they're all connected underground through some sort of root system or it's one big thing. Yeah, exactly. And part of what's remarkable here is that these trees are genetically identical. And so for 16,000 years, this organism has been able to reproduce and send its trees up without making very many mistakes in doing so.

Wow. Like having being alive and being able to make that many copies of yourself and do so very close to perfectly is something pretty remarkable that, like, you know, we struggle to do that as humans. Like, you know, that's part of why we get cancer. So figuring out how this organism was able to preserve its genome for such a long time could yield some really important findings that could benefit us. All right. Let's wrap this up. But with this story, there's a new genetic test that could help detect some hard-to-diagnose infections. Tell us about that. Right. Researchers at the University of California and San Francisco this week, put out a couple studies looking at ways that

they could analyze DNA and RNA from patients and try to figure out what is causing diseases. You know, the traditional way that we diagnose infections is by looking at proteins and other related substances that are produced by infections or by our immune system's response to them. But sometimes when you do those tests, like they come up blank and it's hard to diagnose exactly what is causing that problem. And so scientists theorized that, you know, what if you could just take a sample of biofluids and just try to analyze every bit of genetic material that's in there? And they found out that, yeah, that's actually something that's useful. They were able to, looking at spinal fluid, able to diagnose 86% of neurological infections in a samples that they gathered over a seven-year period, looking at about 4,800 samples.

And they also found that by looking at the genetic material, they could also figure out when there's, you know, a new pathogen that potentially even detect new viruses when they see some genetic material that doesn't line up with anything in their databases. This is obviously going to be a very slow, expensive way to run a test. And so probably not going to be a frontline diagnostic, but when it comes to really hard to treat cases or when other infections have got doctors stumped, this could be a very useful backstop. Cool. Cool stuff as always, Zuma. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Omer Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, based in Washington, D.C.

After the break, we'll talk about the current spike in walking pneumonia and some theories for why it's happening. We'll be right back. When I recently heard of a case of walking pneumonia in a child in my neighborhood, I couldn't believe it. Kids getting pneumonia? Well, I soon found out that across the U.S. there's been an uptick in cases of mycoplasma pneumonia, walking pneumonia. And yes, it's happening mostly in kids. With Thanksgiving and the holiday season upon us,

we're thinking about how to keep you and your family, right? All of us, safe for the holidays. So what do we need to know about this spike of walking pneumonia? Is it something to worry about? What can we do? Joining me to talk about it is Dr. Preeti Sharma, pediatric pulmonologist Children's Health in Dallas, Texas. She's also an associate professor at UT Southwestern.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. Let's start with the basics. Describe what is mycoplasma pneumonia. So mycoplasma is a very common bacteria that's sometimes called atypical. It's not kind of the usual bacteria as we think about that cause other types of infection. And as you pointed out a moment ago, it's really common, but it's more common in older kids, adults.

and we so rarely saw it in younger children that it's not the first thing we think about when kids are sick. Do you have any reasons why we're seeing a spike in it now and in kids? That's a great question. Because commonly we think of mycoplasm and walking pneumonia as being present mostly in older kids and adults, I think some of it is because we have an age of children who didn't get exposed to, as many illnesses. With COVID, many of them were not in group child care. And so their immune systems are still getting regulated to all the things are exposed to.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's dive right into this. Give us the ABCs. First, what are the symptoms? Yeah. So mycoplasma often starts out like a regular cold. So our throat, nasal congestion, sneezing, maybe headache, fevers. And it looks like one of those colds that just doesn't resolve.

And over time, kids start having a cough. And the cough that doesn't seem to get better like you'd expect. Because most people, when they get a respiratory viral illness, like a cold, they start improving in about five to seven days. And with many of these cases of mycoplasma, that seven-day mark, parents are still looking at their kids and saying, you're still coughing quite a bit of. or they're still having fevers after that time frame. And so that's when that's a good time to have somebody investigate,

you know, a healthcare provider investigate a little bit more and try to see what else might be happening. Yeah. And so you should go call, that's when you should call the doc. And you should expect that it's spread among kids by droplet infection, breathing on each other. Yeah. So it's mostly by droplet. exposure. So unlike some of the illnesses that are, you know, a casual exposure can lead to illness.

It really takes more close contact to acquire mycoplasma. And it has a really long incubation time. So even in families, we'll see one person is sick. And just when you think you're out of the woods, because nobody else has gotten sick, the next person will get it. Because it can be communicable even four weeks after the first person has it. Wow. And you know what? The first thing people are going to do is say, maybe I'll take a COVID test. Right. And that's going to be negative. And then you should investigate. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The CDC put out a report last month saying that there was a spike across the country, that spike beginning in the spring. How much of an uptick in cases have you seen as a practitioner in Texas?

Yeah. So we started to be an up. here really more dramatically in the summertime. So late June, July, we started to see more and more cases. And we really thought that at the end of August, we were going to kind of see our peak because kids around here start school mid to late August. And then usually we see things start to decline. And we saw that spike in August. And we've been sort of sustained at that higher level. and have it really started to be a dramatic decrease in cases. And are the cases serious? I mean, is this life-threatening having this?

So the good news is for the vast majority of kids, it's not anything that needs to be managed outside of the house. In some instances, kids can recover without any antibiotics or any special treatment. But for those kids who do get antibiotics, they recover at home and they recover really well. For those people who have underlying medical problems or lung problems or their immune system is compromised, they may struggle more and require hospitalization or require other medications to help them resolve the infection. And how common is that for a child to be hospitalized for this? Fortunately, not very common at all.

Yeah. But it is something to be taken seriously, though. Absolutely. Yeah. And what point do you know that you should be seeking help? So I think when kids are having symptoms past what seems to be the normal recovery period of a viral illness. So most kids have a cold, have those symptoms that we see, will start to improve, you know,

in about five days. And I think if kids are having fevers for longer than that or they're feeling under the weather for longer than that, that's a good time to seek attention. but also if earlier in the course, they're really having other difficulties. So if ever, you know, difficulties breathing, chest pain, other symptoms that really seem unusual to parents out of the ordinary. That's a good time. Right.

Good advice. I know you experienced walking pneumonia very similarly, very intimately this year, because your daughter had it. Yeah. Tell us what that felt like you're being a physician. It was really unusual because fortunately, you know, she's a pretty healthy kid. She got what looked like a summer cold, some congestion and a little bit of a cough. And when it didn't resolve and it kind of got to be disruptive, she wasn't sleeping quite as well.

And the symptoms just weren't getting better like I expected. That was when I started to think that maybe something was different. And that's when we found out and ended up having to treat her. Yeah, and I guess people will mistake it for just a common cold if they just think it's running its course, right? But it can get worse. Absolutely. It can. Exactly.

Yeah, do you do the same things you would do for a cold, like the fluids and things like that? Absolutely. Those supportive things are really helpful, especially early on. And then for those kids who do have the lingering symptoms or, you know, where it's felt that that's what's happening, that mycoplasma infection is at hand, they recover with antibiotics pretty readily. And what about telling, you know, the kids' playmates and parents about this? I would think that's pretty important. It is. And that's a hard one because, you know, our guidelines are that when kids are not

having fevers any longer without the use of any medicines to control fever, that they can return to school. And if they feel up to it, they can, you know, return back to their normal activities. But that's sort of where things spread. But it's. it's always wise to let people know that potentially this is what's going on. Yeah, especially now, right? The holiday season is coming up. There are going to be a lot of gatherings with kids and adults of different generations. Do you have any tips to help people stay safe and prevent the spread of walking pneumonia?

Yeah. The holidays are hard, and that's when we see a lot of viral illnesses or other illnesses kind of spread around. And so if you're attending a gathering and you have symptoms, like cold symptoms, or you've been sick recently, it's always wise to tell people in case there's somebody who is at higher risk to avoid their exposure. And, you know, lots of hand washing, lots of, you know, teaching kids particular how to cover their cough. But also, if it's feasible, wear a mask because that's going to definitely decrease spread of all kinds of illnesses. If you're a parent or a caregiver who has a child, who you are fearful about going to a meeting that where a kid has had walking pneumonia, should you express that fear and say, you know, I'm just going to be safe and not send my kid to this party? And I think that's, you know, that depends on the kid and the family and what their circumstances are. You know, certainly if there's somebody in the home who's at higher risk, it's probably reasonable to say, you know, this might be something.

and we have to skip. And it just depends on their own tolerance of what might happen. Yeah. You mentioned that COVID-19 is probably a contributing factor to why we're seeing spikes in walking pneumonia now. Have you seen this with other illnesses as a practitioner? In the last couple of years, we've seen kind of very interesting patterns with illnesses. So nothing that we've seen our novel illnesses.

right? We've seen mycoplasma and RSV and all these things for ages, but we're seeing them at different times of year, and we're seeing them in different amounts. So, you know, the first year that kids were kind of back in normal school, we saw spike in flu cases and we saw spikes in RSD. So we certainly are seeing it. Yeah, you know, I can't let you go as a pediatric pulmonologist for children and not ask you questions about. other respiratory illnesses that are on your radar this holiday season? Yeah. You know, COVID is always out there. We tend to see some spikes in cases around the time people gather. So holidays, back to school, those kinds of things. For young infants and people who are vulnerable, we certainly

do worry about RSV. So always wise for older adults vaccinate against RSV. And for young infants, talk to your pediatrician about the antibody shot for RSV protection. And then the other is influenza. We're headed into the season where we see more and more cases of the flu. And so we always recommend vaccination against the flu to protect yourself and protect your family members. Now, some great words of free medical advice today for our listeners. Dr. Sharman, thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Dr. Preeti Sharma, pediatric pulmonologist at Children's Health in Dallas, Texas. She is also an associate professor at UT Southwestern. And that's all the time that we have for today. A lot of folks help make the show happen, including Jordan Smudjik. Rasha Aridi. Charles Bergquist. Shoshana Buxbaum. And many more.

On Monday, we'll talk about the body's most fascinating Oregon. The gut. But for now, I'm SciFri producer Kathleen Davis. Have a great weekend.