Science Friday - Omicron News, COVID Severity Questions, Bird Count. Jan 7 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Omicron Variant Drives Winter COVID Surge The United States set a global record this week, recording roughly one million new coronavirus tests in a single day. The current surge in cases is mostly driven by Omicron. The highly contagious variant accounted for about 95% of new cases last week. And, to top it all off, tests are in short supply, the CDC changed its quarantine guidelines, and some schools have returned to remote learning. Virologist Angela Rasmussen joins Ira to help make sense of the latest deluge of Omicron news. Rasmussen is a research scientist at VIDO-InterVac, the University of Saskatchewan’s vaccine research institute in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.   Is Omicron A Less Severe Variant Of COVID-19? Over the past few weeks, a common refrain has popped up in reports about the Omicron variant of COVID-19: The variant seems to be “less severe” than earlier forms of the virus. But as hospitals fill up with coronavirus patients and infections skyrocket, there’s some context needed to understand what the full impact of a less-severe variant might be. An important recent discovery sheds light on the severity of the variant, finding that at least in hamsters, Omicron spares the lungs in a way earlier variants have not. This infection appears to be predominantly in the upper respiratory system, largely in the mouth, throat, and windpipe. But even though a fewer percentage of cases may experience severe disease than with earlier variants, the sheer volume may still threaten hospital capacities. Joining Ira to talk about the severity of the Omicron variant in the body is Dr. Michael Diamond, virologist, and immunologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Also joining the conversation to talk about Omicron’s toll on the healthcare system is Dr. Saskia Popescu, infectious disease epidemiologist and infection prevention expert at the University of Arizona College of Public Health in Phoenix, Arizona.   How Christmas Bird Counts Help Shape Science This winter marks the 122nd annual Christmas Bird Count, a project of the National Audubon Society, which is self-described as the longest-running community science project in the country. What started as a few dozen volunteers in 1900 has grown to tens of thousands of birders, spreading out in 15-mile circles across the country to count every bird insight on one midwinter day. From this record, scientists can draw insights about everything from the abundance of species to how species’ ranges are shifting from year-to-year and decade-to-decade. Ira talks to Audubon’s bird count director Geoff LeBaron, and director of quantitative science Nicole Michel about the value of the annual community science project and some of their more joyful winter sightings. Plus, how the data provide clues to which birds are most likely to adapt as human habitat disruption and climate change continue.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A little bit later in the hour, why the Audubon Christmas bird count is still sending you out into the snow more than a hundred years after its inception. And yes, the answer is data. But first, the U.S. set a global record this week, the highest number of new COVID cases in a single day, about one million, mostly driven by Omicron. The highly contagious variant accounted for about 95 percent of new cases last. week. And to top it all off, tests are in short supply. The CDC changed its quarantine guidelines, and some schools have returned to remote learning. To help us make sense of the latest Omicron news is virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen. She's a research scientist at Vito Intervac,

the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine Research Institute in Saskatoon. Welcome back to Science Friday. Always good to have you. Thank you so much for having me back, Ira. In South Africa and parts of Europe that have already been hit by Omicron, cases have surged and then what? They've dropped pretty rapidly. Do you expect Omicron, the wave in the U.S. to crest and fall more quickly than we've seen in the past? So I do. But the caveat here is that it's not going to happen all at once. So Omicron, as we've seen, it's surging in several major cities.

But it hasn't really leaked out to the entire country at the same rate. So each of those individual communities is going to have a peak that occurs at a different time. So even though the individual peaks within a community or a region that's affected will hopefully go faster than previous surges have, nationwide is going to actually seem like it's taking a little bit longer because there will be different communities all peaking at different periods of time. I know that you co-authored a report with the organization Prep for All that estimates we need, I had to read this number a couple of times. We need 22 billion more additional vaccine doses. Yeah, that's our contention.

And the reason that we came to this conclusion is that while it's true that many countries in the world have been vaccinating people at a fairly brisk clip, there are still 3 billion people worldwide that haven't had a single vaccine dose. And many of the other vaccines that have been distributed worldwide are not the mRNA vaccines. So they're vaccines that are either not authorized in the U.S., such as the CinaVAC and activated vaccine, or vaccines like the AstraZeneca vaccine, for example. Now, any vaccine is better than no vaccine. I want to be clear about that. But as we've seen with Omicron, the MRNA vaccines really do seem to be eliciting broader immunity,

meaning that the immunity that's elicited is more cross-protective against multiple variants than some of these other vaccines. And overall, particularly with an mRNA booster, the vaccine effectiveness is higher against both infection, even though it's not 100%, as well as protecting against severe disease. So our contention is that people should not necessarily be considered fully vaccinated if they've had two doses of one of these other vaccines that doesn't provide as strong of protection as the mRNA vaccines do. And the entire world really should be allowed to have access to the same vaccine benefits that we are getting in the U.S. and in Canada and in Europe and in other countries around the world.

Is the thinking here not only to vaccinate these people, but to prevent or slow down the development of another variant in people who are not vaccinated? Well, that's absolutely right. And I think that this is the one thing we can expect, as long as there are significant populations of people out there. And that includes within the U.S., there are still quite a few unvaccinated people in the U.S., as long as there are susceptible, populations, the virus will continue to spread, the virus will make new variants, and potentially any of those could emerge as a new variant of concern. Now, I know that the CDC recently changed its quarantine recommendations from 10 days down to five days, and then people are supposed to wear a mask

for five days afterwards. And then they amended the guidance this week, saying that people can test if they want after five days. This is all very confusing, and I know you and other scientists have vocally opposed to this change. Tell us why. Yeah, so this has been really, really frustrating simply because it is so confusing. I understand where the CDC is coming from and making this recommendation. There is a real risk that a bunch of people, including fully vaccinated people, are going to be getting Omicron at the same time, and that's going to have a profound potentially impact on essential services. So this guidance was really formulated to prevent that from happening. Now, five days in many people, they will no longer be shedding enough virus to pose a transmission

risk to others. And that's sort of the assumption that this recommendation was based on. However, that's not going to apply to every individual person. And the other issue is that those assumptions are being based on prior variants. The one thing we know with Omicron is that the kinetics of infection are very different. This thing spreads incredibly quickly. And we don't really know, when the peak times are that people are going to be contagious. We haven't collected that information at a robust enough level to, I think, make those conclusions. The other thing about this guidance is that it really does assume that people will be wearing those masks and they will be wearing good quality masks that are well fitted for those full five days.

And that includes at home sometimes within their own households if there's people in their households who have not tested positive. And I think that's just a really big ask. I mean, I think that the issue that me and many of my colleagues had with this was there was no mention initially of taking a rapid test to potentially see if you might be shedding enough virus to pose a transmission risk to others. And part of this is that we simply just don't have the supply of rapid tests. But that's actually also not a responsibility that should be passed on to the public. I'd really like to see more engagement with the fact that we don't have enough rapid tests. test and in efforts to improve access to those tests rather than to just say that they're first unnecessary and now they're kind of optional. But could a rapid test give you a false sense of security if you take it too early, right, when there's not enough to test for? Yeah, it certainly could. And so rapid tests are by no means like the end-all be-all solution to this. They certainly have their limitations. And one of those limitations is sensitivity. But that is why rapid tests,

test can also be very useful for somebody who wants to determine if they're no longer a threat to other people. If you're still shedding enough virus to be detectable on a rapid test, that does indicate that maybe you should continue isolating because you might pose a transmission risk to others. I think that, you know, not including a component helping people to understand how to better use those rapid tests has really been a real mistake. Should asymptomatic people get tested? So yes, people do tend to spread COVID-19 prior to becoming symptomatic. So that means that to catch cases as early as possible, you really do need to be routinely screening asymptomatic people.

And that really is one way that rapid tests could potentially be very beneficial is if you don't have any symptoms, but you think you might have been exposed and you just want to know if you might present a risk to people before you go out and meet with them, then you can take a rapid test whether you're symptomatic or not. And if you test positive, then obviously you should rethink your plan. But I know that because of the shortage of tests, a lot of people are saying now, well, we can only spare tests for people who are symptomatic. And this is problematic for a number of reasons. Not only will it potentially allow some cases to slip by or notice, but it also could impact the way that people can access treatment.

So the new coronavirus antivirals that have been authorized by the FDA require a confirmation of a positive COVID PCR test. If people can't get that PCR test within a reasonable frame of time, then they may actually age out of the window in which those drugs can be prescribed because they can really only be prescribed within five days of diagnosis or symptom onset. Otherwise, they're not very effective. I want to move on briefly in the time we have to talk about schools. Schools all over the country have been extending winter break a week longer or switching back online schooling because of this Omicron surge. Is that the best approach right now to keep schools closed? Boy, Ira, you just ask me all the easy questions. This is something that's why I sit here and you sit there.

Exactly. You know, this is something, this is a question that there's really no good answer for because a lot of it is really going to depend on the types of mitigations that are in place, not just even in a given state or a given school district, but sometimes in a given school, sometimes in a given classroom. It's going to depend on, you know, how many of the staff has been vaccinated. It's going to depend on how old the kids are. Obviously, kids under the age of five can't be vaccinated. It's going to then also depends of kids who are old enough to get vaccinated on the vaccination rate of the students. And it's certainly going to depend on the prevalence of Omicron in that community.

So in some places, absolutely, I think it's a wise idea to pause schools. This is not saying that schools should go back to being remote all the time. But I do think that where you have extremely high community prevalence, where you don't have good effective mitigation measures in schools, and where you may have a lot of vulnerable people in the community, whether they've been vaccinated or not, it is a smart idea potentially to consider pausing in-person classes. I recognize certainly that children benefit immensely from going to school in person, but at some point you have to look at the potential harm, and that harm would be, in this case, measured by hospitalizations and deaths in a community versus delaying the onset of in-person classes.

And finally, this week, the Israeli government released data on the efficacy of a fourth dose of the Pfizer vaccine. the study showed a five-fold increase in antibodies a week after the shot. Wow, do we need a fourth shot? I mean, many of us just got our boosters. You know, this really depends on how you want to use vaccines. If we want to just keep boosting, neutralizing antibody tiders and boosting them and boosting them to make sure that people are as effectively protected against infection altogether

as possible, then, you know, continuing to boost people is something that would probably work for that. But really, from a larger perspective, we also do need to think about making sure that those precious vaccine doses can get out to other people in the world. If everybody has the long-term immunity provided by the vaccines, preferably with at least one booster dose, then you're not going to have as much transmission. You're not going to have as much prevalence, and you're not necessarily going to need individual people to have antibody titers that remain extremely high. Dr. Angela Rasmus, a virologist at Vito Intervac, the University of Saskatchewan's

Vaccine Research Institute in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Thank you, again, for taking time to have to be with us today. Thank you so much, Ira. Take care. We have to take a break, and when we come back, we'll continue our conversation about the Omicron variant. We're going to talk about why it is said the variant is less severe than others,

and what that really means. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. For the past few weeks, we have heard that the Omicron variant seems to be less severe than the previous form, Delta. Yes, it spreads a lot faster than Delta, but if you get infected with Omicron, chances are you might feel ill, but could safely recover at home. No need for a trip to the emergency room.

But paired with the skyrocketing infection numbers across the U.S., what does labeling omicron as less severe even mean in terms of public health? What about our immunocompromised peer? And with more people getting infected, will we have more long haulers, people who have lingering secondary illnesses? And what about kids, infants and toddlers who are not vaccinated? Here to break down Omicron severity are my guests. Dr. Michael Diamond, virologist and immunologist, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Dr. Saskia Popescu, infectious disease epidemiologist and infection prevention expert at the University of University of of Arizona College of Public Health in Phoenix. Welcome, Michael. Welcome back, Saskia. Thank you.

So nice to be back. Thanks. Nice to have you back. Let me begin, Saskia, with you. Omicron is spreading just so quickly, but what do we need to consider to evaluate how severe it is? You know, I think it's really challenging right now because it's barely been over a month since we identified Omicron and we're learning about this every single day. So first and foremost, we're going to need more genomic sequencing to know who actually has this new variant who's tested positive and collect more data on hospitalizations, not just within the U.S., but globally. One of the biggest hurdles we have right now is that we've got some great data from South Africa, but the question is, is this new variant inherently less severe? Or is it because it hit a population

that had been severely impacted by COVID already? And there was some inherent infection-induced immunity before. So we're learning so much more about this. every single day. And it's very easy right now to get small anecdotal studies and information from a handful of patients and make decisions on that. So I always stress, we need more information on hospitalizations. We need more genomic sequencing and ultimately time and not to jump the gun when it comes to a small cluster of cases that we're studying. For example, the CDC's new guidance was really based off of an MMWR study that was six people. That's way too small. And we've barely just learned about this. So it's going to take some time. Yeah, because people are making decisions

on risk about what they hear on these cases. Exactly. And it's going to take time. Yeah. And so I think we just need to be patient and wait for the data to come in a little bit. Michael, I know your lab at Washington University has been looking at how different variants impact the respiratory tract. And you found something interesting about Omicron and the lungs. Explain to us what you found. Yeah. So we've been interested in trying to understand whether there are different in the ability for Omicron to infect the upper airway and the lower airway, which it seems to be what we're seeing in humans. As Saskia alluded to, we're seeing perhaps more upper respiratory infection than really severe lung infections. And so to model that, we've been studying animal

models, rodent models, mice and hamsters. And what we found in all of the different strains of mice that we tested and was multiple ones and all of the hamsters. And this was a group through the NIH collection of investigators, so about 10 investigators, working very quickly. In every case, we saw attenuation of Omicron in the animals, meaning that they were able to infect the upper airway, but just less frequently able to cause infection in the lung or cause pneumonia. Does that mean we're seeing less scarring in the lungs, less than with the previous variants? I think we have to be a little careful here because it's a little uncertain about extrapolating directly from animal models to humans. And I do agree with Saskia that we need

additional data because when we do the animal models, they don't have any pre-existing immunity. They don't have a vaccine. They never were infected before in this particular case when we did the study. We really need to know in humans who have never been infected, who have never been vaccinated before, are we also seeing evidence of attenuation? And this would allow us then to sort of make a more direct link between the animal studies and the human studies. But as of now, we know definitively that if you have a vaccine or had a prior infection, you're much more likely to get mild disease and not require severe interventions in a hospital. But we do not know yet in children under five that haven't been vaccinated, even in adults that didn't get vaccinated or infected, what is the course

of disease? So I think it's a little premature to predict exactly what's going on, but the animal data would suggest that it may be more attenuated in the lower lung, but that needs to be corroborated. The tests we've used for COVID have largely been no swabs, but some experts are now saying that throat swabs, like how we test for strep throat, are better at picking up the omacron variant. Does that make sense to you based on what you found in the lab? Well, we certainly are able to, in some of the animal models, particularly the hamster model, and also even in non-human primates, although we have not done those studies ourselves, can show that you can detect viral RNA, which is what's used for the,

tests or even viral antigen in either nose swabs or in saliva. And in fact, a number of the early diagnostic tests that were generated were saliva-based. And they were done here. We implemented them at Washington University. In many schools at academic institutions and other places also use saliva-based PCR tests. So sampling of saliva is much easier. It's less invasive and has pretty good sensitivity. So I think that certainly we have evidence that a virus is present there, whether it's infectious in saliva is a different question, but certainly easy for diagnostic purposes. Saskia, let's talk about hospitalizations. What do we know about how this big Omicron surge is impacting the health care system? Well, right now, we actually are seen just such an

unprecedented surge in cases. It's over a 247% increase in life. 14 days. So on January 5th, the daily average was 585,000 new cases, but actually, that's a running average. So just on January 5th, we saw over 704,000 new cases in the United States. And hospitalizations are also on the rise. So as reported on January 5th as well, the daily average is over 110,000 new people hospitalized, which is a 58% increase over 14 days. So the numbers are growing every single day. This is really challenging because right now, even though we're hopeful that Omicron means less severe disease, the issue is that we're having staffing shortages. Nearly 20% of hospital facilities are reporting critical care staffing shortages.

And a lot of this is a result of staff getting sick and needing to call out. So you see that changing CDC guidance also about people able to return to work after five days or work while they're in isolation with a mask on. And I think that's really indicative of a staffing shortage across the U.S. So hospitalizations are on the rise for patients, but also really straining a health care system. And the winter, which is already one of our hardest seasons in health care because we have influenza on respiratory viruses. And, you know, the fact that people have been kind of avoiding medical care because of COVID for a while or challenging, you know, challenges to get medical care.

So this is a really hard, unprecedented time. It's, you know, we're moving into the third year. of this pandemic, health care workers are exhausted, and now they're getting sick and we're having staffing shortages. So our hospitals are severely strained. How much of that strain on the hospital system can be attributed to people who go to the hospital but don't need to go to the hospital? That's a tricky question. You know, that data will likely take time for us to understand. But right now, during the winter months, of course, you know, you have a lot of people, as I mentioned, who have been maybe avoiding health care because they're nervous about COVID or it's just been already so overwhelmed.

So we always see, I call them the worried well, you know, people that maybe don't need an emergency department, but maybe that's their only access to care. Maybe they're very stressed because they don't feel well. We're in the middle of this huge surge and they want to get seen to know if they have COVID. So that data point is kind of hard to really understand, but we are seeing very busy emergency departments and especially with the staffing shortages coupled with testing shortages. You know, people are really struggling to get tested for COVID, whether they feel that they have it because they have symptoms or they've recently been exposed. So often that leads people to go to emergency departments or other health care facilities like urgent cares to try and get seen just to get tested.

And that's amplifying the strain. But right now, you know, I can tell you from yours doing this, hospitals get so stressed during the winter months. It's just our busiest season. And it's very, very stressful when you have staffing shortages and you're in the middle of this. very severe winter surge of COVID. If I can add a comment, I think there's a couple of points, and I totally agree. One thing is that in the emergency room, I think there are a certain percentage of people who may test positive for COVID, who certainly are worried which way their illness is going to go.

Are they going to get worse? Are they going to need an emergency visit? And so they actually preempted and just show up because they have major concerns, especially if they're elderly or immunocompromised in any way. And this creates tremendous burden on the emergency department because then they're not able to, in addition to all of the COVID patients, see their normal patients. And as Saskia alluded to, in the winter months, there's many other illnesses that are occurring, flu and otherwise, in addition to all of the other trauma, cardiac, whatever other systems are compromised in individuals that require hospitalizations. The second thing is at least in our hospital, and I'm sure in many across the country, we have stopped doing elective surgeries now in order to save, beds and save staff to take care of COVID patients. And of course, this is an issue because people

may need surgeries, although they may not be emergency, but they need to delay them. And this creates a problem for dealing with their current medical issues. So there are a lot of ramifications of having large numbers of infections that you're not able to control because people aren't vaccinated or the vaccines aren't working as effectively. I want to talk about kids for a moment because I know that there are more kids in hospitals now during this Omicron surge. than there have been before. Dr. Fauci said it may be overcounting because these kids may be in the hospital for something else, and while they're there, they get tested and turns out they have infections. Do we know what is happening there, Saskia? You know, I think I really truly think it's

a little premature for us to understand. It's going to take a few more weeks because, again, this is the busiest time. You know, when we were working in Peds, you have so many kids coming in with respiratory illness already, so it's not surprising to see them getting tested whether they're coming in for another illness surgery or just feeling a little run down and they end up testing positive for COVID-19. So I think that is a possibility. But in terms of Omicron, it's still very early for us to understand its impact on pediatric patients. And speaking of pediatric patients, what about infants in daycare? I'm talking one to four-year-olds.

Aren't they still very vulnerable because they don't have any vaccinations? entirely, and I think that's probably our biggest hurdle right now is that we're focusing on boosters and adults and now encouraging them and children, but we have an entire age group that is unable to be vaccinated and they're back in school, they're back in daycare. So they're more likely to get exposed. But also when you add that to the holidays where everybody's gathering and we are seeing so many exposures as a result of holiday parties and gathering. So it's, you know, I stress so much that it is so early. in our understanding of Omicron and what that means for adult immunity and infection, but also children. But overwhelmingly, I think it's important that we acknowledge vaccines have been very helpful and effective, even if we see a little bit of decrease efficacy against infection over time. For those who are truly vulnerable and unable to be vaccinated, it does pose a risk, but we just don't know what that means for children right now. Michael, many of us who take COVID seriously are concerned about the possibility of long COVID.

where people have health complications, weeks and even months after they've recovered from the virus. Is it too early to tell how Omicron and long COVID could mix? Ira, it's a great question, and I think it's in the back of our minds, both as infectious disease physicians, scientists, and otherwise. The short answer is we just don't know. It is way too early to know. We don't really fully understand long-haul COVID syndrome in the context of historical SARS COVID-2 isolates in COVID-19. In other words, why some people get it and why some people don't. It appears that certainly it's in greater frequency in people who get severe disease,

but it also occurs somewhat sporadically in people who didn't have very severe disease. So then if you think about it in that way, then if it did occur in Omicron and we have larger numbers of people who get infected, it is possible we may be setting ourselves up for a large amount of it. However, the reality is we just don't know, and we don't know all of the factors that lead to this clinical manifestation. And so until we really do, we're not going to be able to predict this. So I would say that at this point, we need to watch out for it. We need to sort of assess what's going on.

But it's very difficult to predict whether Omicron is going to cause it at all. And if it does, whether it's with less frequency or greater frequency. And so this is something that I think it's just too early. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. talking about the Omicron risk. And looking forward, what kinds of studies on Omicron would you like to do in your lab? What do you need to know? What do you want to know? Well, I think one of the things that we really want to know is why is the virus more transmissible? And is it because it's infecting the upper airway much, much better? Or are there other properties of the virus that enable it to be spread more easily? For example, it's more stable in certain types of droplets than other types of droplets. it has an ability to infect certain types of cells in the upper airway better. In addition to what we know is its ability to evade antibody responses. So there are multiple factors that affect transmissibility of a virus,

and I think we're still at the very early stages of beginning to understand why Omicron appears to spread so much faster than even the other variants such as Delta. Some people have expressed fear that Omicron and Delta could mix together and form a super bug. Do you have that fear, Michael? Well, I would say that coronaviruses have the potential to recombine. And what that means is you can take one virus and another virus, and if a person or an animal, if it was a reservoir, got co-infected, some of the genetic material could exchange. So that's one mechanism of evolution of this virus, in addition to just accumulating mutations because it's RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, which allows it to generate its new RNA, it has some error

capacity. So I would say it is possible that the virus could swap some gene segments or regions of it, but so far we have not seen that in large scale, but it's certainly something that we're looking out for. Saskia earlier alluded to the fact that we need to do and expand our genomic sequencing capacity to track to see how is Omicron changing in real time. So this needs to be done so that we can evaluate whether any types of these recombinations are occurring. So far, nothing like that has occurred. It is theoretically possible. Saskia, I give you the last word.

Give us your takeaway point you want to leave our audience with when it comes to the severity of Omicron. I would say, hold tight. You're going to be seeing so much information coming in, as you already have in the coming weeks and months about Omicron, because we're getting it anecdotally, small little bits, small studies and to understand this means building a mosaic out of all these data points to get a better picture of what this new variant means in terms of transmission but also disease severity. So take it with the grain of salt and know that it takes time for us to understand these things. In some ways, we're building the bridges we cross it, but we have years now of data supporting us

and it's just it's important to be patient and to not just see a single study and kind of hit the panic Biden. We'll get through this together. Dr. Michael Diamond, virologist and immunologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Dr. Saskia Popescu, infectious disease epidemiologist, infection prevention expert at the University of Arizona, College of Public Health in Phoenix, Arizona. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Thanks so much.

We have to take a break, and when we come back, something totally different. This year's Christmas bird count wrapped up earlier in the week. And we're going to check in on this Century Plus community science project and what the data is revealing about where the birds are. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm I, Myro Flato. Was bird watching part of your holiday season? I do the Christmas bird count every year.

We had two unusual birds on our count this year, trumpeter swans and a yellow-bellied sapsucker. But my favorite birds so far is a lucistic house finch. We've named him Frosty. He is absolutely white, except he still got the male house finch red on his head and a little bit on his rump. He is really a stunning bird, and it's a treat every time we see him. That was Kat from Logmount, Colorado on our sci-fi Voxpop app. Cat Comment is a great segue into talking about this year's Christmas bird count, marking its 122nd year organized by the National Audubon Society every year since 1900.

and what was once a small project of a few dozen people has now lured tens of thousands of burders out of doors in deep winter to identify and count their feathered friends. That's a lot of binoculars and hot chocolate. The data from these counts has helped fuel research into how species are changing over time, both as humans continue to disrupt their habitats and as climate change tamperes with everything from drought to warming winters.

Here to talk more about this long-standing collection project, the joy of birding, and some troubling trends, are my guests. Jeff LeBarran, the Christmas Bird Count Director for the National Audubon Society. He joins us from Williamsburg, Massachusetts. Welcome back, Jeff. It's great to be on the show again, Ira. Thanks very much for having me. Oh, you're like a staple on this show at this time of the year. Welcome back.

And Dr. Nicole, Michael, Director of Quantitative Science, also at Audubon. She's in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Science Friday. It's great to be here. Thank you. Nice to have you, too. Jeff, you've been our Mr. Christmas bird count for so many years. One more time for people who are just joining us. Why are we sending birders out in the snow every holiday season to count what they see? Well, birders have this amazing ability to, they just have a tremendous amount of passion about birding and everything that has to do with it. And we have just this amazing database that has been generated where we not only have the bird numbers, but also the effort numbers. So we know how much effort it took to count those birds.

People get really attached not only to the birds, but they get a real sense of place for the Christmas bird counts. That gives us the continuity over the years to know that the data that are being generated are truly valuable. And that's what I want to talk about with you, Nicole, because as Jeff says, this is real data, right? that scientists like you rely on to understand bird populations. Absolutely. I mean, this is the longest running bird count that we have in North America, one of the longest in the world. And so it just gives us this incredible look back into history into how bird populations have changed over time that we just don't get any other way. We can go back certainly about 50, 60 years and see how bird populations have changed.

And we're seeing quite a bit of change over time, as you might imagine. And since the account literally just wrapped up a couple of days ago in some places, Jeff, I imagine it's just too soon to know the data hall this year. But how was your birding experience? Any highlights? I didn't see anything that I haven't seen overall before, but I did the local Northampton count. And actually, the most exciting bird was almost our first bird of the day, which was an adult bald eagle. They always get them on the count itself, but I've never had one actually on the CBC up here.

and it was really, really fascinating. Yeah, coincidentally, my very first bird of account was also an adult bald eagle, and I was birding a fairly industrial area. So I was definitely not expecting to see it. And then shortly after that, I saw Wilson Snipe, which again, I've seen before, but it was in a very unexpected location. Well, bald eagles must be in vogue this year because Ari in Little Rock called us from a birding trip last week.

I am at a lake, and my family has excused me temporarily for my Christmas Eve festivities so that I can go look at ducks. So I'm out here on the side of the highway looking at gadwals, buffalo heads, scops of different kinds, and I just spotted a big mess of coots. They're a funny-looking blackbird, and there's like 250 of them. And a bald eagle just swooped out of the sky trying to see. see if he could get his Christmas Eve meal. Nicole, what have some of your favorite bird sightings in total this winter been, not just in the Christmas bird cap? Oh my gosh. Well, you know, with COVID, I have not been, you know, getting out and about quite as much as usual, but I, of course, have feeders all over my yard, and I have two Anna's hummingbirds that have claimed my feeders. And

every time I go out there to refill them, they'll come in and, you know, fly right at my head. You know, just, just seeing the birds in the yard is so nice. You know, especially, you know, when you have snow and you see the colorful birds against that white background. Now, Jeff, I know you got to see something really exciting and rare and kind of weird this winter. And so did two birders who called us, Annie and Emily. So, Emily, I reached out to you on New Year's Eve, telling you I had heard from her fend up in Maine that there had been a re-spotting of a stellar sea eagle and asked you if you wanted to come on a chase. And I said, I'm not doing anything. Let's see what happened.

Yeah. A bird has an eight-foot wingspan. A giant orange beak. Massive yellow feet. Callens for days. Yeah, I just remember when we came around the corner and it came into view, thinking at first it must have been a joke. Like I'm like, no, no, that can't be it.

That's too big. Jeff, what is this eagle they're talking about? This is one of the most magnificent raptors in the world. It's probably tied with two other species for being the largest eagle out there, both in size and in weight. There aren't very many of them. There's only somewhere between three and four thousand stellar sea eagles in existence. They basically breed in Chemtachca Peninsula of Russia and they winter in concentrations down in Japan. This one particular stellar sea eagle, which is an adult, has decided it wants to do a tour of North America. It was first seen toward the end of last year in the interior of Alaska for one brief period. Then it disappeared for a long time. It was next seen near Houston, Texas. This year, it was discovered in southeastern Massachusetts, where it spent about three or four days and then disappeared again. And that's when it showed up in Maine.

I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to say that I did get to see it on the end of the year. It's just, it's an amazing bird. And yes, you sort of do feel like you need to pin it. yourself because I'm especially looking at one in Maine. It's surreal. Well, you'll enjoy a comment we got from a listener Kathy in Kansas City on the Cyphra Vox Pop app. I think you're going to really like this. This is my first winter of really watching birds every chance I get. They are amazing. It expands my delight in the details of the natural world and things I can learn about. I stop by a nearby by park when I'm on errands just to see, quote, who might be out there.

And then when I find out who's out there, I end up looking them up in my books or going online to find out why these birds are doing these things on this day. Nicole, was this how you came to be a bird researcher? It really is. You know, for my story and all of us have our own unique stories, my grandfather was in the birds, you know, and so I was learning about the swallows and San Juan Capistrano when I was a young kid and feeding, you know, black cap chickadees out of my hand, I happened to meet a group of birders,

and one of them taught me how to identify bird songs. And that just opened up a whole new world to me that you could, you know, hear these sounds and know what birds were around you communicating with one another. And so that was it for me, and I've worked with birds for, you know, the last 25 years or so since. Do you get the feeling that more people are birding these days, perhaps because they're home?

In a strange way, COVID almost helped birding. And a lot of people started going out and sort of became birders during COVID. Birds have the amazing ability of engaging everything that we think is wonderful. I mean, fly, they sing. A lot of them have these incredible migrations. And they're really beautiful, a lot of them. So it's just a wonderful way of engaging people in nature, which then hopefully leads to an appreciation and wanting to conserve nature.

Yeah, well, let's get back to the dated trends you're seeing what happened last year then with the bird populations. So we had about 250 fewer counts than usual last year and roughly 10,000 or so observers fewer. But interestingly, the numbers of birds that we tallied was actually slightly higher than the year before. And I think that's because people were outside actually spending more time on foot and covering their areas more thoroughly. and also the weather was continentally pretty good last year, which is somewhat unusual. This year we've been having storms on the weekends across a lot of the continent. And that very much affects the numbers of birds that people can find. What Audubon has right on the Christmas Birdcount website, which is Christmasbirdcount.org,

is what we're calling our trends viewer, where we've taken all the species that are well sampled in the CBC, and we've actually have the trends for all about, I think it's 500 or so species, that shows over time how they're doing not only continentally but also on, you know, local and regional basis. Nicole, did you see anything interesting in that data? The data are telling us quite a bit, you know, for one thing, you know, we've learned through analyses of Christmas bird count data as well as a breeding survey that has also gone on for about 50 years, the breeding bird survey. We know that we've lost about three billion birds since 1970. Christmas bird count data are also telling us birds are our

shifting north. We're seeing a lot of rain shifts due to climate change. And we see this particularly in the winter, birds are moving farther and faster in the winter than they are in the breeding season. Birds are really physiologically limited in the winter. They're not able to to move into areas that are further north because the temperatures are too cold. And now that the temperatures are warming, they're able to or perhaps even need to move further north. We were talking with some people who are in the hunting community in the southeast. And, you know, hunters have been saying for a number of years now that, you know, wow, there are just a lot fewer ducks out there.

Hunters are coming home with much fewer captures than previously. And so we dug into that analysis and we found that of the 16 species we looked at, well, are shifting north and we linked that directly to warming temperatures. Jeff, but if the birds are simply shifting their ranges as the climate changes, should we be less concerned about their survival if they're finding homes in new places? It's really an unknown as to how easily many of the species will be able to react to a changing climate. We know that some birds, the more generalist species like Robbins and Blue Jays, and the birds that are habituated and do well in human disturbed environments,

they're doing pretty well. Any of the birds that are more specialized, potentially will be having some real issues as the environmental conditions that they need will be shifting away from the areas where they've been sort of programmed to be forever. This is going to be especially true of the migratory species that breed up here in North America in the summer and then winter in Latin America and the Caribbean. They don't really have the adaptability to be able to say, oh, I'll look around for another place. Nicole, do you have any species like that? One of the major impacts that we talked about is hurricanes. With climate change,

we're seeing an increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes. And a new study by our colleagues, Eric Johnson showed that we had in fall 2020, two back-to-back hurricanes, Lauren Delta. The CBC in 2020, 2021, they went out there and for the first time in 36 years, didn't see any Blue Jays, didn't see any Carolina rents. I mean, all the birds that are just your bread and butter in the southeast were gone. Hurricanes come through and they disturb the wetlands and they disturb the forest canopy and it just takes years for the habitat to return. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking to Jeff LeBaron and Nicole from the National Audubon Society about the annual

Christmas bird count and what kind of birds you might be seeing outside your window this winter. Let's go back to our listeners. We had a call from Ellen in Boulder County, Colorado. She did her first Christmas bird count in December, and she also noticed a connection to climate change. According to our group leader, we had a record number of spotted towees this year. Toys don't always winter in our area, but this winter has been incredibly dry and mild, which may have something to do with it. Those dry conditions also contributed to the incredible fires that destroyed almost a thousand structures in Superior and Louisville, including a neighborhood where we did part of our count.

It really goes to show how climate change impacts all of us, the birds and the people. Wow. And that makes me want to know if it's possible to predict knowing bird habits and habitats, Which birds might be better suited to survive and thrive as global warming and sea level rise and extreme weather accelerate? Will Christmas bird counting help us see that clearly, Nicole? Yeah, absolutely. As Jeff alluded to her earlier, we're seeing, you know, there are clear winners losers in climate change. So those species that are habitat generalists that use habitats that are abundant, those species that do well with humans. When I was out to my bird count on Sunday, I saw a lot more birds in the neighborhoods than I did down in, you know, industrial areas,

even where there were patches of natural habitat. You know, on the other hand, birds that are very specialized in the habitat they use, especially if it's a limited habitat, such as a riparian area or grasslands, as well as neotropical migrants. In addition to, you know, Jeff's saying them coming back to the same area, we're seeing already that neotropical migrants, instead of shifting. north, they're just contracting their ranges. They're shrinking the southern ends of their ranges. So they're losing habitat. So species like bobbolinks are predicted to be on the brink,

one of 389 species that are expected to lose more habitat than they will gain as climate change progresses. Wow. One of the things I just love about the Christmas bird count is that you don't need to have a great deal of special bird expertise to help collect vital scientific data. And that's me. What can we do, though, the rest of the year to help make sure birds are getting what they need to thrive even in a changing world, Nicole? Oh, there's a lot that you can do to help birds. Planting native plants will provide more food and shelter for birds. You can put up stickers or film on your windows in order to reduce collisions and turn off lights at night. I'm a cat lover, but keeping your cats indoors or in cateos really help reduce bird mortality.

Jeff, anything to add there? What about your bird feeder, keeping it stocked? You want to keep it stocked but clean also. If there is a disease outbreak or if there's something that happens with the food in the feeder, if it gets fungus or whatever in there, you don't want to be feeding them bad food. A bird bath is a very important thing. And the other thing is just, you know, let your yard be messy. We encourage gardeners to be lazy.

Like Nicole said, plant, native plants, that's going to have a lot more native food source for the birds and more insect life for the bug eaters and more seeds and such for the seed eaters. And the really interesting thing is it can be so sort of overwhelming thinking, oh, you know, there's nothing I can do about climate change. But if you make your yard a better place for birds and wildlife, you are helping your birds that can, you know, scale out to your neighborhood or maybe city ordinances. And just small efforts like that on a local basis can actually really help. Jeff LeVarren, the Christmas Bird Count Director for the National Audubon Society in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. Dr. Nicole, Director of Quantitative Science, also at Audubon. She's in Portland, Oregon. Thank you both for joining us today.

Thank you, Ira. Thanks very much, Ira. And that's about it for this hour. Here's Daniel Petersmith with this week's credits. Thanks, Ira. Jennifer Fenwick is our Director of Institutional Giving, Ariel Zitch is our education director. Beth Rami is our controller,

and I'm digital producer, Daniel Petersmith. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Daniel. BJ Leatherman composed our theme music, and of course, if you missed any part of the program, or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday.

Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.