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Speaker 1: Over the past year, a particular strain of the flu

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Speaker 1: has been making headlines around the world.

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Speaker 2: Some types of bird flu exists harmlessly in wild birds,

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Speaker 2: but a new, highly contagious strain is fatal to chickens

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Speaker 2: and it's spreading around the US. New reports from January

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Speaker 2: document millions of infected birds in nearly every state.

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Speaker 1: Despite its name, this bird flu has not stayed in birds.

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Speaker 1: It's known as H five N one, and in the

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Speaker 1: US alone, it's been found in bobcats, bears, dolphins, foxes, skunks,

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Speaker 1: and otters. And as the list of infected mammals keeps growing,

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Speaker 1: humans are getting nervous because bird flu sometimes does make

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Speaker 1: its way to people, and when that happens, it can

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Speaker 1: be deadly. So today we're going to try to understand

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Speaker 1: where the flu comes from, how it jumps from species

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Speaker 1: to species, and what this all means for humans. Also,

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Speaker 1: we'll hear an account from the front lines of influence

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Speaker 1: of research, And by front lines, I mean a little

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Speaker 1: island in the North Atlantic that's full of seals.

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Speaker 3: You've got a bunch of scientists all geared up in

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Speaker 3: our field gear and we are crawling through army crawl

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Speaker 3: style through the dunes to sneak up on a seal pup.

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Speaker 3: It can be somewhat comical if you didn't know what

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Speaker 3: was going on.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is incubation. Okay, you ready, Let's

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Speaker 1: talk about viruses.

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Speaker 4: Okay, let's talk about viruses.

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Speaker 1: For today's episode, I called up David Kwalman. He's a

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Speaker 1: journalist who writes about ecology and evolutionary biology, and he

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Speaker 1: wrote a book called Spillover Animal Infections and the Next

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Speaker 1: Human Pandemic. David has spent years tracking viruses like the

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Speaker 1: flu across animal species and he's documented their spillover into

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Speaker 1: the human world. I'd like to talk about when people

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Speaker 1: figured out that flu was a disease of birds.

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Speaker 4: Yes, there is a wonderful eminent influenza scientist and physician

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Speaker 4: named Rob Webster, originally a New Zealander who has been

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Speaker 4: at Saint Jude's Memorial Children's Hospital for most of his

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Speaker 4: career studying influenza, and back in the nineteen sixties I

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Speaker 4: think it was nineteen sixty seven, he and a friend

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Speaker 4: of his were walking along a beach in Australia and

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Speaker 4: they found a bunch of dead birds lying on the beach. Shearwaters.

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Speaker 4: What killed all these birds all of a sudden. Well

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Speaker 4: then they wondered whether, I don't know, could it have

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Speaker 4: been maybe an influenza. Maybe we should do a little

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Speaker 4: research on that. So they went to their boss and

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Speaker 4: they said, we want to go to the Great Barrier

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Speaker 4: Reef and live on an island for a few weeks

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Speaker 4: and sampled dead birds and any birds that we can

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Speaker 4: catch and see if we can find influenza. And their

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Speaker 4: boss happened to know that Webster was a passionate sport fisherman,

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Speaker 4: and he looked at these two young guys and he says,

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Speaker 4: you guys are delusional. Webster told me that verbatim. He said,

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Speaker 4: this man looked at them and said, you guys are

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Speaker 4: delusional if you think I'm going to pay for you

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Speaker 4: to go and live on an island off the Great

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Speaker 4: Barrier Reef and fish. But they persist, and eventually they

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Speaker 4: get a small stipend for the who so they go

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Speaker 4: out there and do this research and they find flu

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Speaker 4: in birds. And from that effort and a lot of

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Speaker 4: research that followed after it. But thanks largely to Rob

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Speaker 4: Webster and his friend, we know now that all of

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Speaker 4: the human influenza A type viruses that infect us come

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Speaker 4: from wild aquatic birds.

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Speaker 1: Huh. And to ask sort of the dumb question, why

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Speaker 1: is that important? Why is that a big deal?

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Speaker 4: Well, with any sort of viral threat that's getting into

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Speaker 4: humans periodically, dramatically, murderously, it's important to know how how

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Speaker 4: is that getting into humans, so we can prevent them

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Speaker 4: from getting into us.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about H five N one. It's been

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Speaker 1: around for a while.

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Speaker 4: Right, This version of H five N one has been

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Speaker 4: around since nineteen ninety six. It was found killing some birds,

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Speaker 4: and then in two thousand and five it killed a

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Speaker 4: large number of bar headed geese at a place called

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Speaker 4: Chinghai Lake in western China. From there it has gone

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Speaker 4: from infecting wild birds to infecting domestic birds and then

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Speaker 4: infecting mammals.

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Speaker 1: I want to just talk for a minute about the

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Speaker 1: influenza virus. It's interesting, right, It's interesting how it works,

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Speaker 1: how it functions. So just like, tell me about the

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Speaker 1: influenza virus.

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Speaker 4: The influenza viruses belong to a family of RNA viruses,

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Speaker 4: meaning that their genome, the little information molecule inside the

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Speaker 4: protein capsule of the virus, is written in the molecule

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Speaker 4: RNA rather than DNA. DNA is the famous double helix molecule.

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Speaker 4: It's very stable, it has self repairing mechanisms, and so

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Speaker 4: when it copies itself, it corrects its mistakes, doesn't make

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Speaker 4: very many mistakes. When RNA, a single strand of RNA

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Speaker 4: copies itself, it makes a lot of mistakes. RNA viruses

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Speaker 4: evolve quickly and are capable of jumping from one kind

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Speaker 4: of host into another. The influenza viruses also have another trick.

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Speaker 4: They have segmented genomes. So their genomes twelve to fourteen

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Speaker 4: thousand letters of RNA is segmented into eight segments that

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Speaker 4: pop apart between one and the next. So imagine an engine,

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Speaker 4: a locomotive, and six box cars and a caboose, and

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Speaker 4: that's your influenza virus.

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Speaker 1: So now we have this virus, the flu virus, and

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Speaker 1: the whole genome can change quickly and does change quickly

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Speaker 1: because it's RNA rather than DNA. And on top of that,

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Speaker 1: you have this sort of segmented you know, railcar like

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Speaker 1: nature that allows for kind of rapid change as well.

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Speaker 4: And that rapid change is accomplished by swapping of pieces

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Speaker 4: with other viruses. If two different particles of influenza replicate

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Speaker 4: themselves in the same cell at the same time, then

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Speaker 4: there is this event, this trick called reassortment that can occur.

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Speaker 1: And that reassortment is really bad for say, our immune system. Right,

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Speaker 1: and suddenly we've never seen anything like this one before.

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Speaker 4: That's right, that's right. And so why does a virus

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Speaker 4: get called H five N one? The numbers refer to

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Speaker 4: the fact that there are you know, fifteen or twenty

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Speaker 4: variations of the possible H segment and a number of

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Speaker 4: other possible variations of the end segment. So you have

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Speaker 4: H five N one, H two and nine, and the

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Speaker 4: H and the end.

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Speaker 1: Are proteins that are on the surface of the virus, right,

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Speaker 1: and so that our immune system record, that's correct. So okay,

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Speaker 1: so we have this virus. It has this ability to

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Speaker 1: change very quickly. How does it go from species to species?

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Speaker 1: We know that it's largely in birds. How does it

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Speaker 1: move among species?

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Speaker 4: Well, by contact is the first answer to that. That's

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Speaker 4: the ecology side. A wild bird becomes infected with an influenza,

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Speaker 4: let's say a duck, a wild duck. Rob Webster says,

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Speaker 4: the duck is the trojan horse when it comes to

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Speaker 4: bird flu avian influenza.

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Speaker 1: Like it I like a semi mixed metaphor.

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Speaker 4: What he means by that is it's the secret carrier.

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Speaker 4: When a duck becomes infected with avian influenza at least

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Speaker 4: many types of avian influenza, it doesn't show symptoms, it

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Speaker 4: doesn't fall down. It continues to migrate and congregate with

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Speaker 4: other birds, carrying the virus and pooping it out into lakes, ponds,

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Speaker 4: streams wherever it goes, depositing this little gift of virus,

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Speaker 4: and other birds then are susceptible to that virus when

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Speaker 4: they pick it up. And then if your chickens and

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Speaker 4: your geese start to fall dead, you might think about

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Speaker 4: that trojan horse in the form of a duck that

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Speaker 4: came through and brought that virus.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so now it's gone from bird to bird. How

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Speaker 1: does it go from bird to mammal?

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Speaker 4: A virus such as influenza gets into animal cells by

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Speaker 4: attaching to particular receptors on the surface of those cells.

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Speaker 4: In birds, it attaches to a particular kind of receptor.

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Speaker 4: Humans have a different kind of receptor. Pigs have both

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Speaker 4: the bird like and the mammalian receptor. So a pig

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Speaker 4: can become infected with a virus that is adapted to

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Speaker 4: attaching to the bird receptor, and then while it's multiplying

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Speaker 4: in the pig, that virus can evolve to be able

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Speaker 4: to attach also to the mammal type receptor. When it

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Speaker 4: comes out of the pigs, it's capable of infecting humans.

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Speaker 1: Ah, so it's easy for a pig to get bird flu,

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Speaker 1: and pigs are this sort of mixing vessel basically, where

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Speaker 1: a bird flu can mutate into a flu that can

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Speaker 1: infect other kinds of mammals, including humans. That's right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So I think now we have a really good base

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Speaker 1: of knowledge to talk about H five N one, this

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Speaker 1: strain of flu that is currently infecting birds. First, tell

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Speaker 1: me the scope of it, like how much is it

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Speaker 1: infecting birds? How many birds is it infecting?

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Speaker 4: Well, this version of H five N one for the

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Speaker 4: last couple of years has been circling the planet. It's

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Speaker 4: probably killing millions of wild birds. And if and when

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Speaker 4: it gets into those bird species, wildbird species that are endangered,

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Speaker 4: like the hooping crane with nine hundred individuals on the planet,

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Speaker 4: or the California condor with maybe three hundred individuals, it

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Speaker 4: has the potential to knock those out entirely, to drive

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Speaker 4: both of those species over the brink of extinction.

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Speaker 1: You've described what's happening with age five in one as

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Speaker 1: a kind of pandemic that is happening right now.

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Speaker 4: Yes, for birds, For wild birds, it's a pandemic, and

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Speaker 4: for domestic birds it's a pandemic. If you have a

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Speaker 4: million chickens on a poultry farm and the bird flu

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Speaker 4: comes in by way of a duck that happens to

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Speaker 4: come and poop in their water trough and some of

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Speaker 4: those chickens get infected, that virus can spread through those

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Speaker 4: million chickens very quickly, which means billions and billions and

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Speaker 4: trillions and trillions of viral particles replicating. Each time the

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Speaker 4: virus replicates itself, there's a potential for it to make mistakes,

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Speaker 4: to have a mutation, a random mutation, and several of

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Speaker 4: those random mutations can create a virus that can infect

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Speaker 4: the guy who's cleaning out the cages. So the fact

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Speaker 4: that we have thirty three billion chickens on this planet

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Speaker 4: at a given moment means that there is this huge

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Speaker 4: petri dish for the encouragement of evolution in the bird

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Speaker 4: flu virus. Millions of birds in poultry operations around the

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Speaker 4: world have either died or been killed preventively to stop

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Speaker 4: the spread of this this virus in commercial operations.

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Speaker 1: And infections of people have been thankfully rare so far, Yes,

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Speaker 1: they have been rare. Right And crucially, there's no evidence

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Speaker 1: that it can go from person to person. It just

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Speaker 1: goes from bird to person when people are working very

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Speaker 1: very closely with birds.

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Speaker 4: So far, Yes, that is being watched very carefully, although

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Speaker 4: probably not as carefully as it should be watched. There

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Speaker 4: is such a randomness, such an element of randomness involved

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Speaker 4: in influenza evolution, that you can know what its capacity

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Speaker 4: to evolve quickly is, but you can't say what's going

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Speaker 4: to happen tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: Plainly, the terrible day that we hope will not come

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Speaker 1: is when there is demonstrated human to human transmission of

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Speaker 1: H five and one short of that, what should I

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Speaker 1: look out for, like, as a person who wants to

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Speaker 1: be well informed about this, Like, what's the signal that

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Speaker 1: I need to, you know, buy some bottle of water

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Speaker 1: and lock the door.

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Speaker 4: Well, one of the signals that is increasing in volume

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Speaker 4: is the infection of mammals with H five N one

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Speaker 4: bird flu. So when you see another story about well,

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Speaker 4: bird flu just killed another porpoise, bird flu just killed

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Speaker 4: another dolphin, another seal. That is a warning alarm, and

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Speaker 4: the more it happens, the loud of the alarm gain.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back with more in just a minute. My

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Speaker 1: guest for the second half of the show is Wendy

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Speaker 1: per Year. She's a molecular virologist at the Coming School

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Speaker 1: of Veterinary Medicine at Tuffts University and her job is

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Speaker 1: looking out for that key warning sign that David Kwaman

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Speaker 1: was talking about. She studies wild mammals to try and

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Speaker 1: detect when they're being infected with H five N one.

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Speaker 3: It's H five N one two three four four B.

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Speaker 3: It's like it's very it just rolls off the tongue right.

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Speaker 1: Wendy told me about a moment last spring when she

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Speaker 1: got an alarming phone call. It came from Linda Dohity,

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Speaker 1: who runs an organization called Marine Mammals of Maine.

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Speaker 3: So she called me as I was pulling into my

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Speaker 3: parking spot and she's like, Wendy, I think we might

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Speaker 3: have a problem. We have some seals that are are

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Speaker 3: coming in. They're showing really strong respiratory signs like I'm

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Speaker 3: really nervous that high path has arrived here in the seals.

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Speaker 1: High path means high pathogenicity, which means bad flu strains

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Speaker 1: like H five N one.

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Speaker 3: Honestly, this kind of felt like our mission impossible moment,

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Speaker 3: so I instructed her to overnight samples to me. So

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Speaker 3: she has all of the supplies in house there of

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Speaker 3: the different vials that we need, and it's really it's

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Speaker 3: the same exact stuff that we all have used doing

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Speaker 3: COVID screening, so it's you know, they get swabbed, it

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Speaker 3: goes into a viral transport media into a little tube, but.

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Speaker 1: From a seal, so they're sticking like a Q tip

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Speaker 1: up the seals nose.

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Speaker 3: Yes, so we stick Q tips up the seals nose.

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Speaker 3: So we do nasal samples and rectal samples, which thankfully

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Speaker 3: we haven't done with humans. And those all came to

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Speaker 3: me overnight and we immediately ran those samples as soon

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Speaker 3: as they arrived here in the lab, and we detected

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Speaker 3: a really strong signal for the H five N one

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Speaker 3: for the high path influenza.

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Speaker 1: Whendy ran the tests again just to make sure, and

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Speaker 1: she got the same result. H five N one had

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Speaker 1: made its way to seals along the coast of Maine.

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Speaker 1: She sounded the alarm, notified the FEDS, and fortunately this

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Speaker 1: outbreak passed pretty quickly, but Wendy and other scientists are

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Speaker 1: still worried about future outbreaks. Let's just talk about why

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Speaker 1: this moment is a big deal, Like, why is this

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Speaker 1: such an important moment?

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Speaker 3: So one of the major reasons is that there's a

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Speaker 3: lot of different forms of influenza that circulate in wildlife,

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Speaker 3: but when it makes that shift into mammals, because it's

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Speaker 3: usually circulating in birds, and when it shifts over into mammals,

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Speaker 3: obviously we're a mammal. So that means it is one

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Speaker 3: step closer to being of concern for human health and

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Speaker 3: pandemic potential.

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Speaker 1: It's basically it's just getting closer to us in a

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Speaker 1: biological sense exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they're all been referred to as a as a sentinel.

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Speaker 3: They're able to give us a heads up of what

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Speaker 3: sort of things might be moving from birds into a mammal,

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Speaker 3: But not to say that the seals themselves aren't. For

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Speaker 3: it's not just about the human health. So it's also

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Speaker 3: that you know, there is concern that it was going

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Speaker 3: to have a very large impact on wildlife as well,

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Speaker 3: because this is a whole new virus that is going

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Speaker 3: into a species that hasn't seen this virus before, so

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Speaker 3: potentially they don't have the immune protection in place to

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Speaker 3: be able to handle that. So it's human health, it's

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Speaker 3: the animal health, it's all of it.

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Speaker 1: How do marine mammals get a hive in one this

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Speaker 1: high path flu That.

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Speaker 3: Is an excellent question and that is one of the

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Speaker 3: things that we are actively still trying to find out.

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Speaker 3: So there are a couple of different ways. It seems

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Speaker 3: pretty clear it's coming from wild birds. So the bird

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Speaker 3: is where the virus is circulating and it spills over

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Speaker 3: and makes its way into seals. So the question is

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Speaker 3: how exactly it could be the case that the seal

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Speaker 3: is actually consuming an infected.

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Speaker 1: Bird, eating it, yeah, eating it, Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And that's what we've seen a lot of terrestrial mammals

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Speaker 3: that that seems to be.

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Speaker 1: How I mean, do seals eat birds well.

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Speaker 3: In some cases, yes, but it is not It certainly

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Speaker 3: is not a common thing on their their venu and

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Speaker 3: given the number of seals that we saw with high

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Speaker 3: path influenza, it seems very unlikely that each of them

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Speaker 3: were having the unusual meal of a bird, so it

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Speaker 3: is it's the highest probability in my mind, is that

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Speaker 3: the virus is being shed into the environment and that

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Speaker 3: the seals are coming into contact with it, whether it

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Speaker 3: is bird poop on the beach and they're you know,

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Speaker 3: ingesting it or inhaling it that way, or we see

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Speaker 3: little bodies of water where birds are pooping in the

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Speaker 3: water there and the seals are then hanging out in

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Speaker 3: that water too, So that's certainly possibility.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's worth noting that with birds, flu, unlike

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Speaker 1: in humans, is is a fegal oral. It's a like

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Speaker 1: a gas through intestinal right right exactly.

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Speaker 3: That's an important point. So in birds it's a it's

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Speaker 3: a gi so it's they're they're shedding it in their

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Speaker 3: feces and.

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Speaker 1: That's how birds spread it to each other like humans

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Speaker 1: get some diseases that way, like from drinking dirty water,

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Speaker 1: and that's the way flu works for birds, but not

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Speaker 1: for people exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's possible that that's how it's getting into

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Speaker 3: seals as well. Okay, it's also possible that the seals

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Speaker 3: are spreading amongst themselves once it gets into that population,

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Speaker 3: and that's something that is still being very actively looked at.

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Speaker 3: It's not clear yet, it's not really ruled in or

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Speaker 3: ruled out.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned that just kind of like as

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Speaker 1: one of several options. But that's a huge, huge, high

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Speaker 1: stakes question for people, right, Like the virus going from

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Speaker 1: birds to seals is way different than the virus going

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Speaker 1: from mammal to mammal. Right, that is a huge, huge,

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Speaker 1: profoundly important public health question. It absolutely is. I'm shocked,

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Speaker 1: frankly that we don't know the answer. Scared, Yeah, I know.

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Speaker 3: But the thing is is it's not an easy answer

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Speaker 3: to get because you need a pretty sizable data set

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Speaker 3: to really be able to say anything with confidence. And

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Speaker 3: the number of sequences that we were able to get

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Speaker 3: from viruses off of seals is a small enough number

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Speaker 3: that the data is still not clear. It's not really

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Speaker 3: convincing one way or the other.

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Speaker 1: So, Okay, that's the sort of abstract, high level story.

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Speaker 1: I also want to talk about your field work. As

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Speaker 1: I understand you go out and basically hang out with seals.

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Speaker 1: Tell me about that.

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Speaker 3: So we have several different sites around the Gulf of Maine.

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Speaker 3: The primary one that I personally go to is Montomoy,

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Speaker 3: and that is off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 1: What part of the year do you go to Montomoy?

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Speaker 3: The time when everybody wants to go to the islands

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Speaker 3: off of Cape Cod in the middle of the winter

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Speaker 3: January and February. Montamoi is one of my favorite places

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Speaker 3: on the planet. Though it's off of Cape Cod, it's

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Speaker 3: very remote there is there's there are no developments there,

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Speaker 3: there's no heat, electricity, running water. The boats go and

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Speaker 3: drop us off and we have whatever food and water

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Speaker 3: and safety gear we brought with us. And there is

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Speaker 3: an old lighthouse there. It's actually two hundred year old

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Speaker 3: lighthouse just had its anniversary. It hasn't been operational for

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Speaker 3: the last hundred years. So the Park Service is very

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Speaker 3: gracious in letting us use that as basically a base camp.

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Speaker 1: And it's you and a few researchers and how many seals.

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Speaker 3: Oh, lots of seals. So in the region, it's estimated

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Speaker 3: that there's probably about fifty thousand, but on Monomoy we're

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Speaker 3: talking a couple of thousand at that period of time.

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Speaker 1: That's a lot of seals, A lot of seals. I mean,

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Speaker 1: what's it smell like?

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Speaker 3: So the very first time that I went out to Monomoy,

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Speaker 3: we're all geared up and we land on the beach

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Speaker 3: and we start to walk over to the seals, and

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Speaker 3: there's this pungent smell of skunk, and I was like, oh,

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Speaker 3: somebody must have been spray I by skunk on there

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Speaker 3: like their field clothes, and we're just none of us

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Speaker 3: are talking about it, so I'm just gonna We're just

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Speaker 3: going to carry on. And then eventually I came to

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Speaker 3: realize that no, no, that muskie smell, that is the

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Speaker 3: smell of the seals. So it smells very similar to

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Speaker 3: skunk in my opinion.

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Speaker 1: What do they sound like? Is it loud like you

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Speaker 1: hear like a thousand seals going off.

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Speaker 3: During the day, Typically not at all unless they're they're

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Speaker 3: kind of bickering and fighting and having some territorial little battles.

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Speaker 3: At night time, it's sort of a consistent, low bellowing

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Speaker 3: that you hear in the background while you're while you're

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Speaker 3: trying to sleep. It's actually quite nice ambient noise.

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Speaker 1: It does sound a feeling that sounds better than the

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Speaker 1: smell certainly right. So so you're out there, what do

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Speaker 1: you do?

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Speaker 3: We are going out and actually capturing the pups, and

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Speaker 3: we focus on the pups because they are, give take,

381
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Speaker 3: about one hundred pounds as opposed to the adults, which

382
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Speaker 3: can be around eight hundred pounds. So we're able to

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00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:08,920
Speaker 3: physically restrain the pups. And that's why we're there during

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Speaker 3: January and February because that's the pupping season. It can

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Speaker 3: be somewhat comical if you didn't know what was going on.

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Speaker 3: You've got a bunch of scientists all geared up, and

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Speaker 3: we are crawling through army crawl style through the dunes

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Speaker 3: to sneak up on a seal pup and put this

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Speaker 3: bag over the seal that we then capture it, and

390
00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:33,439
Speaker 3: we're doing sample collections. We're doing measurements to look for

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Speaker 3: just the overall health of the animals, and then we

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Speaker 3: put a tag on them. In some cases we put

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Speaker 3: on a satellite tag so we can actually follow their

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Speaker 3: movement and then we release them and all of that

395
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 3: can happen and as quickly as six minutes, and then

396
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Speaker 3: we max it out at twenty minutes. So if we

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Speaker 3: hit twenty minutes, we release the seal.

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Speaker 1: So when you go out in the winter and you

399
00:23:56,720 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: are swabbing baby seals, like you are doing the sentinel work,

400
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Speaker 1: you're like out there looking for H five in one

401
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:09,680
Speaker 1: to be the early warning system for the rest of us. Exactly.

402
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Speaker 3: We are trying to pick up anything that might be

403
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 3: developing the ability to go from birds to mammals and

404
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:18,920
Speaker 3: then trying to figure out is that something that then

405
00:24:19,280 --> 00:24:22,520
Speaker 3: presents the possibility that it could then come into humans

406
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Speaker 3: or other wild mammals, but mammals in general.

407
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Speaker 1: So if I hope not, When let's say, if someone

408
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 1: finds a clear instance of H five in one spreading

409
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:39,520
Speaker 1: from mammal to mammal, what will that mean?

410
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Speaker 3: That is the point where we collectively need to get

411
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 3: much more serious about preparing for it. The good news

412
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 3: with high path influenza is I like to say, it's

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Speaker 3: not COVID, so it's we see it coming. We know influenza,

414
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:02,240
Speaker 3: we have vaccines against influenza. We have seed stocks that

415
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 3: are maintained to be able to rapidly grow up vaccines,

416
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Speaker 3: so we have the capacity to respond. It's important that

417
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:11,640
Speaker 3: we continue to do very robust surveillance so that we

418
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Speaker 3: know if or when these changes happen, and what exactly

419
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Speaker 3: they look like.

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Speaker 1: I will say, after talking to you about what's happening

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Speaker 1: with H five N one and mammals, I'm certainly not

422
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: not worried, but I am less worried than I was

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Speaker 1: before I talk to you.

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Speaker 3: Excellent. I like to think that we will be prepared

425
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:38,200
Speaker 3: for the human health side of things, that we will

426
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 3: be prepared to respond pretty efficiently and pretty rapidly should

427
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 3: it become a concern for human health. My bigger concern

428
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:50,400
Speaker 3: is for wildlife. That's a much trickier one for us

429
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 3: to be able to mitigate, and it could have a

430
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Speaker 3: very long lasting, very negative impact to several wildlife species.

431
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Speaker 3: But I think from human health we will be able

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Speaker 3: to hopefully respond well.

433
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Speaker 1: I appreciate all your time.

434
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.

435
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Speaker 1: One last thing. About a month after we spoke with Wendy,

436
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Speaker 1: H five N one was detected in seals off the

437
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: coast of Washington State. It was the first time AGE

438
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Speaker 1: five and one had been detected in marine mammals off

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Speaker 1: the west coast of the United States. Thanks to my

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Speaker 1: guest today, David Quarman and Wendy per Year. Next week

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Speaker 1: we'll be talking about HPV human peppellomavirus and about how

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Speaker 1: the HPV vaccine explains American's complicated relationship to all vaccines.

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Speaker 3: The HPV story is so interesting because support was coming

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Speaker 3: from everywhere, but backlash was coming from everywhere too, Like

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Speaker 3: all over the Political Spectrum.

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Speaker 1: Incubation is a co production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby

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Speaker 1: Studio at iHeartMedia. It's produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang, Ariela Markowitz,

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Speaker 1: and am Gaines McQuaid. Our editors are Julia Barton and

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Speaker 1: Karen Schakerjie Mastering by Anne Pope, fact checking by Joseph Friedman.

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Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Katherine Girardeau and Matt Romano. I'm

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Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein. Thanks for listening.