The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Can The Sound Of Your Cough Determine Whether You Have Covid-19?

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

An intriguing new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells a few things about the art of listening to a cough. And whatever happened to Peter Moosebridge.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of the Bridge Daily. It's Tuesday of week 35, and it's a big day for me and for my pal Mark Bulgich, as our book went on sale today, Extraordinary Canadians. If you want to know more about it, then dial back to yesterday's podcast because Mark was a guest on it and we had lots of fun talking to you about Extraordinary Canadians, how we did it, how we went about it and giving you some hints as to some of the people who are in the book. But the early indications are quite positive. We're quite excited about

the launch by Simon & Schuster, and we've been both doing interviews all this week, last week as well, and next week as well. So I've been on a number of different networks and radio stations and been interviewed by various papers. There's a great spread in the Globe and Mail today, a couple of pages actually, exerting one of the segments, one of the Canadians we profile for Extraordinary Canadians. Once again, it's a very diverse group of Canadians

that come from all parts of the country, different professions, different genders, different cultures, different backgrounds. They're quite the group of people. And so I hope you have a chance to grab a copy. You might want to start with The Globe. It's also online on The Globe. But in terms of the old print edition,

for those of us who used to love holding a paper in our hands, it's a great spread. And the Toronto Star is going to exert it as well later this week, a different segment of the book. So we're getting lots of play. A lot of people think this is just the right kind of book for the difficult times that we're living through right now. Anyway, enough about me. Yesterday's other big news, and it was also on that podcast last night a little bit, was the talk of the new vaccine. So today, in some ways to catch up, because the last week or so we have not talked much about COVID-19, the coronavirus at all,

given the US election and a variety of other things. But I do want to catch up with a number of things today to give you some indication that I have not forgotten this story, just like you haven't forgotten it. It is a part of our lives. Anyway, let me start off with, I've got something special, as the headline on this thing shows, about the cough. And does a cough, can a cough tell you? What can a cough tell you if you have a cough? The sound of that cough. We'll get to that in a minute. New studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT.

It's quite interesting. But first of all, let's catch up on a few other things as it relates to COVID-19 and as it relates to the news about the new vaccine. The Economist this week is sharing findings that as the northern hemisphere grows colder through the fall, that's us, the death rates attributed to COVID-19 are rising rapidly, while among the 39 countries in the southern hemisphere, where summer is just now beginning, reported deaths are now 61% below their July peak. However, just how much weather alone is responsible is not well understood at the moment. With a vaccine developed by Pfizer showing extraordinary results, that's the one yesterday, and an antibody therapy from Eli Lilly being granted an emergency use authorization by the FDA, Bloomberg notes that the double shot of progress has injected hope in many

for the end of the pandemic on the horizon. And not surprisingly, and we talked about this months ago, that if one of these vaccines that definitely needed to be stored cold turned out to be a winner, it was going to be an issue about storage. So attention is now turning towards the logistics around transport of the ultra-cold storage needed for the vaccine and the two-dose vaccine, that's the Pfizer one, which requires more logistics than a one-dose vaccine. So lots of studies going on about that.

But lots of hope and promise too. So, you've got to condition yourself though and the Brits who are looking for a vaccine just as hard and desperately as anybody else as they're going through a series of new lockdown procedures, near lockdowns, you know, 10 day, 14 day in specific areas.

So, in the last week, Boris Johnson has begun putting NHS, the National Health Service doctors, on alert for a potential COVID-19 vaccine rollout before Christmas. That's optimistic, but he's putting them on notice that it might happen, while also preparing England to go into a second national lockdown, try to contain a new wave of infections. Now, this is what's important about vaccines, and this is, you know, I tried to caution you yesterday,

but Kate Bingham, she's the United Kingdom's Vaccine Task Force Chairwoman, has warned in the last few days that the first generation of vaccines, quoting her here now, the first generation of vaccines is likely to be imperfect, and we should be prepared that they might not prevent infection, but rather reduce symptoms. Okay? You want to keep that in mind. It's the cautionary note that needs to be sounded. Here's something else. I think we talked about this once a month or six weeks ago when we first started hearing that there was something going on on this front. A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the coronavirus

completely protected ferrets that it was tested on. According to what was a small study, small study, released in the last week by an international team of scientists. It has not yet been peer-reviewed. However, there is some excitement around this nasal spray. If the spray, which the scientists described as non-toxic and stable, is proved to work in ferrets, could it be proved to work in humans? And if it could prove to be working in humans,

it could provide a new way to fight the pandemic with a daily spritz up the nose, acting like a vaccine. And yet another related issue is featured in Wired, the online magazine. A Wired investigation finds dozens of districts have purchased thermal cameras to monitor fevers with the bonus feature of the top-of-the-line facial recognition school, facial recognition, sorry. This points to an increasing trend of surveillance in schools, and facial recognition is already a powerful and effective way to market the devices to school systems.

Here's the latest from AstraZeneca. It's announced that its COVID-19 vaccine could arrive in January. Less than three months now. If data from its vaccine trials in November and December look promising, AstraZeneca was originally scheduled to deliver millions of vaccines by September. But their delay in developing the vaccine is partly due to the drop in COVID-19 cases earlier this year, which slowed the progress of human trials that rely on subjects being exposed to the disease naturally. They don't have that problem anymore.

Let's be clear. They absolutely don't have a problem with not enough cases to test on. There's been an explosion right across North America with the possible exception of Atlantic Canada. But I've got to be careful. I was talking to my friends at Mount Allison University the other day. Great friends. I'm a former chancellor there.

And they have been incredibly successful through this fall with their student body, which is actually larger than last year, and about half of it is taking classes in class, the other half online, roughly, which is very encouraging. That's not happening in a lot of other universities in Canada. But I was impressing upon them it ain't over yet, and outbreaks can happen in a heartbeat. All right?

Okay. Okay. Now, if you're like me, then throughout this year, you've had more than a few occasions over these last 35 weeks where you've suddenly coughed like that, right? I've done it a couple of times on this podcast. And if you're like me, when you hear somebody cough, you immediately sort of like spring back. Oh my gosh. Have they got it?

Well, there's a new study from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that talks about the cough and how scientists are now determining that you can tell something about a cough in terms of how serious the situation may be for the coffer. Okay? serious the situation may be for the coffer. Okay. They're even going so far as to developing an app that you can have on

your phone that can record you coughing and give you some information about what your cough sounds like. Now, this is somewhat at the early stages. I think it's actually, to be fair, it's a little beyond the early stages. But they're quite excited about it. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to play you a little bit from the MIT website, just a little bit from the MIT website.

Just a little bit. Maybe a minute. Now, unfortunately, you're going to have to listen to a few coughs. And listen closely. Because it's interesting to try and discern the differences between these different coughs. And it's all explained to you what they are. So why don't we listen to that and we'll talk about it on the other side, as they say. Which has become this like term in broadcasting on the cable networks.

I'm going to play this clip and we'll talk to you on the other side. The other side of the clip. Or we'll, we've got to take a break here. But we'll talk again on the other side. So are you listening? Because we'll talk again on the other side. Asymptomatic people who are infected with COVID-19 exhibit, by definition, no discernible physical symptoms of the disease.

But it seems those who are asymptomatic may not be entirely free of changes wrought by the virus. The differences between a cough of an asymptomatic patient and a healthy individual are not decipherable to the human ear, but it turns out that they can be picked up by artificial intelligence. For example, here is a cough of a healthy individual. And now here is a cough of an asymptomatic person with COVID-19. To make things even more challenging, listen to a person who has symptoms and is COVID-19 positive. It's very hard, frankly almost impossible, for a person to distinguish these three coughs, even after you've listened to them multiple times. But a team of MIT researchers report they have developed an AI model that can distinguish asymptomatic people with COVID-19 from healthy individuals without the disease through forced

cough recordings. To develop their model, the researchers used tens of thousands of samples of coughs submitted by people voluntarily through web browsers and devices such as cell phones and laptops. When they fed the model new cough recordings, it accurately identified 98.5% of coughs from people who were confirmed to have COVID-19, including 100% of coughs from the asymptomatic, who reported they did not have symptoms but had tested positive for the virus. Well, there you go. Here we are on the other side, by the way. Quite frankly, none of those coughs sounded very healthy to me. They all sounded pretty brutal. But I have listened to it a few times,

and I can distinguish a little bit of a difference, although it's kind of like wine tasting for me. I've been in wine tasting competitions where, you know, they ask you to tell the difference between these wines or the bouquet and the whatever. They all taste the same to me. Sorry. But that to me. Sorry. But that's me. That's my taste buds.

And I'm sure I'm the first person to compare wine tasting to COVID-19 coughing. But I can understand why the MIT person on that recording said, it's hard to tell the difference. And it is hard to tell the difference. But look how far we've come in 35 weeks. What have we talked about here so far? We've talked about a number of different vaccines that are possible. We've talked, and some of them, more than just possible. They seem to be on track and could be starting to be distributed within the next couple of months.

We talked about a nasal spray. That's very early in the game. And now we're talking about an app on your phone that can listen to you cough and tell you with some degree of certainty about whether or not you may have contracted COVID-19. An app on your phone that listens to your cough. Really. Hey, it's MIT. It's got to be real.

This isn't like Trump University or something. This is likely to be the real deal. Now, as I said, that's just an excerpt from the MIT study. And if you go online, if you're interested in listening to more people coughing, you can go online to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and search out their cough recording and listen to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and search out their cough recording and listen to the whole thing. But you get the idea.

The idea is there are things you can tell just from the sound of a cough. And if you've got the right ear and the right expertise, you may be in the position to do just that. All right. That's the cough bonus on the Bridge Daily today. Now, before we leave you, I want to, and this is going to be a short one today, shorter than certainly they've been for the last couple of weeks,

and that's okay too. We could all use a little break. Maybe you don't want to walk or run or bike as far as you normally do listening to the podcast. Or maybe you want to listen to other podcasts as well, dare I say it. But here's my other little bit, which I think is interesting. You know, the entertainment industry, as we know,

and as we've talked about a number of times in a number of areas, has been desperately trying to sort out how it can get back in the game, having most of its elements shut COVID era will play out at home, not surprisingly, not in theaters, with Universal Pictures' animated picture The Croods A New Age, while Disney is planning to release its own animated picture, Pixar's Soul, on Disney+. That's its streaming service. It's possible that retailers will face another threat. Oh, this is moving into a different story about shopping. But I found the movie thing interesting. I'll tell you why.

Because obviously they want to attract, as we head into the holiday season, which really starts with Thanksgiving in the U.S. and right through until the end of the year and Christmas and all the associated other celebrations that take place around the end of the year. So you've got these two big face-offs with movies that are primarily designed for young people, for kids. The Croods and Soul from Pixar. Croods from Universal Pictures. Now why am I mentioning this?

I'm mentioning this because where is the follow-up to Zootopia? One of the greatest movies ever made. Zootopia from Disney. Academy Award winner. Golden Globe winner. Zootopia. Zootopia. I was waiting for the follow-up movie.

You know, they could have called it Zootopia II. Or they could have called it The Return of Peter Moosebridge. Or they could have called it the real Peter Moosebridge story? I mean, there were so many ways they could have followed up. Moosebridge just had kind of a tease

in Zootopia 1. It's kind of only in there for a couple of seconds. But he was there. His voice booming across the screen. His voice helping edge that movie with more than a billion dollars in worldwide sales to an Oscar,

to a Golden Globe. People want to know more about the Peter Moosebridge story. Don't you agree? All right, I've said my piece. I've made my case. I'll just let it sit there. I'll wait for the protests in the streets. More Moosebridge.

More Moosebridge. I can hear it now. Okay. So there we go. A short Tuesday of Week 35 edition of the bridge daily. I've got to get out and do a couple more interviews. I got a big one coming up. That will be on the CBC this Sunday with Pia Chattopadhyay.

Looking forward to that. Bob, we're recording that this afternoon. So I've got to tense up, get ready to talk about extraordinary Canadians. And I love talking about them. But if you want to hear a little more about the book, please listen to last night's podcast, where my guest was Mark Wilkich, my co-author,

or go online to thepetermansbridge.com. That's my website, and click on Extraordinary Canadians, and that'll take you through to some background on the book, and also how to order the book if you want to order it online. Somebody wrote to me overnight, very excited about the book and wanting to know what she would have to do for me to sign the book. I can't remember where she was. I think she was on the prayers. Well, I'm unlikely to be there in the next little while. And we don't want to go

through the expense of sending things back and forth. But if you buy the book and you want me email me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And I will sign a book plate and have it mailed out to you, so include your mailing address. But I would suggest you buy the book first. Okay? And if you do that, I'll do my end of the bargain. Anyway, thank you all for listening on this one, this edition of the Bridge Daily for Tuesday of week 35. It's been a treat to talk to you. We'll be back with something on hump day tomorrow,

Wednesday of week 35. We'll be back then. I'm Peter Mansbridge in 24 hours. Thank you.