WEBVTT - Influenza: In the Wild 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:05.960 Over the past year, a particular strain of the flu 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.080 has been making headlines around the world. 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:11.640 Some types of bird flu exists harmlessly in wild birds, 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:15.160 but a new, highly contagious strain is fatal to chickens 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.760 and it's spreading around the US. New reports from January 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:22.000 document millions of infected birds in nearly every state. 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:25.840 Despite its name, this bird flu has not stayed in birds. 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:28.600 It's known as H five N one, and in the 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:33.800 US alone, it's been found in bobcats, bears, dolphins, foxes, skunks, 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:38.360 and otters. And as the list of infected mammals keeps growing, 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:42.879 humans are getting nervous because bird flu sometimes does make 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:45.559 its way to people, and when that happens, it can 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:49.760 be deadly. So today we're going to try to understand 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.120 where the flu comes from, how it jumps from species 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:57.200 to species, and what this all means for humans. Also, 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:00.000 we'll hear an account from the front lines of influence 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.320 of research, And by front lines, I mean a little 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.840 island in the North Atlantic that's full of seals. 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:11.679 You've got a bunch of scientists all geared up in 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:15.360 our field gear and we are crawling through army crawl 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:19.720 style through the dunes to sneak up on a seal pup. 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:21.920 It can be somewhat comical if you didn't know what 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:22.479 was going on. 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:33.000 I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is incubation. Okay, you ready, Let's 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:34.360 talk about viruses. 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.520 Okay, let's talk about viruses. 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.560 For today's episode, I called up David Kwalman. He's a 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:43.520 journalist who writes about ecology and evolutionary biology, and he 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.199 wrote a book called Spillover Animal Infections and the Next 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.920 Human Pandemic. David has spent years tracking viruses like the 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.680 flu across animal species and he's documented their spillover into 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:58.080 the human world. I'd like to talk about when people 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:01.280 figured out that flu was a disease of birds. 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:09.520 Yes, there is a wonderful eminent influenza scientist and physician 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:15.280 named Rob Webster, originally a New Zealander who has been 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.760 at Saint Jude's Memorial Children's Hospital for most of his 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:23.480 career studying influenza, and back in the nineteen sixties I 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.640 think it was nineteen sixty seven, he and a friend 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:31.799 of his were walking along a beach in Australia and 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:36.679 they found a bunch of dead birds lying on the beach. Shearwaters. 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:39.400 What killed all these birds all of a sudden. Well 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:41.920 then they wondered whether, I don't know, could it have 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:45.720 been maybe an influenza. Maybe we should do a little 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.480 research on that. So they went to their boss and 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.440 they said, we want to go to the Great Barrier 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:55.560 Reef and live on an island for a few weeks 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.240 and sampled dead birds and any birds that we can 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:03.680 catch and see if we can find influenza. And their 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:09.400 boss happened to know that Webster was a passionate sport fisherman, 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:12.040 and he looked at these two young guys and he says, 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:17.040 you guys are delusional. Webster told me that verbatim. He said, 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:19.240 this man looked at them and said, you guys are 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:21.679 delusional if you think I'm going to pay for you 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:23.560 to go and live on an island off the Great 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:28.359 Barrier Reef and fish. But they persist, and eventually they 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.440 get a small stipend for the who so they go 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:36.800 out there and do this research and they find flu 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:44.560 in birds. And from that effort and a lot of 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:49.440 research that followed after it. But thanks largely to Rob 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:54.240 Webster and his friend, we know now that all of 0:03:54.240 --> 0:04:00.640 the human influenza A type viruses that infect us come 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:02.400 from wild aquatic birds. 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.640 Huh. And to ask sort of the dumb question, why 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:08.280 is that important? Why is that a big deal? 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:14.480 Well, with any sort of viral threat that's getting into 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:20.840 humans periodically, dramatically, murderously, it's important to know how how 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.600 is that getting into humans, so we can prevent them 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:26.440 from getting into us. 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.680 So let's talk about H five N one. It's been 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:30.800 around for a while. 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.000 Right, This version of H five N one has been 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:37.680 around since nineteen ninety six. It was found killing some birds, 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:41.320 and then in two thousand and five it killed a 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.160 large number of bar headed geese at a place called 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:49.760 Chinghai Lake in western China. From there it has gone 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:55.240 from infecting wild birds to infecting domestic birds and then 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:56.839 infecting mammals. 0:04:57.360 --> 0:04:59.280 I want to just talk for a minute about the 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:05.239 influenza virus. It's interesting, right, It's interesting how it works, 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:07.400 how it functions. So just like, tell me about the 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:08.360 influenza virus. 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:14.400 The influenza viruses belong to a family of RNA viruses, 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:19.920 meaning that their genome, the little information molecule inside the 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:23.880 protein capsule of the virus, is written in the molecule 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:28.920 RNA rather than DNA. DNA is the famous double helix molecule. 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.320 It's very stable, it has self repairing mechanisms, and so 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.200 when it copies itself, it corrects its mistakes, doesn't make 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:40.599 very many mistakes. When RNA, a single strand of RNA 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.560 copies itself, it makes a lot of mistakes. RNA viruses 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:47.320 evolve quickly and are capable of jumping from one kind 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:51.799 of host into another. The influenza viruses also have another trick. 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:56.479 They have segmented genomes. So their genomes twelve to fourteen 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:03.840 thousand letters of RNA is segmented into eight segments that 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:09.240 pop apart between one and the next. So imagine an engine, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:13.120 a locomotive, and six box cars and a caboose, and 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:14.640 that's your influenza virus. 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:20.080 So now we have this virus, the flu virus, and 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.559 the whole genome can change quickly and does change quickly 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:27.560 because it's RNA rather than DNA. And on top of that, 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.680 you have this sort of segmented you know, railcar like 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:36.040 nature that allows for kind of rapid change as well. 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:39.760 And that rapid change is accomplished by swapping of pieces 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:45.240 with other viruses. If two different particles of influenza replicate 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.400 themselves in the same cell at the same time, then 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:54.080 there is this event, this trick called reassortment that can occur. 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:59.600 And that reassortment is really bad for say, our immune system. Right, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:04.279 and suddenly we've never seen anything like this one before. 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.240 That's right, that's right. And so why does a virus 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:10.680 get called H five N one? The numbers refer to 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:14.280 the fact that there are you know, fifteen or twenty 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:19.840 variations of the possible H segment and a number of 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:23.080 other possible variations of the end segment. So you have 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.960 H five N one, H two and nine, and the 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:27.800 H and the end. 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.480 Are proteins that are on the surface of the virus, right, 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:37.040 and so that our immune system record, that's correct. So okay, 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:39.680 so we have this virus. It has this ability to 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:44.640 change very quickly. How does it go from species to species? 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.040 We know that it's largely in birds. How does it 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:48.800 move among species? 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.360 Well, by contact is the first answer to that. That's 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:58.760 the ecology side. A wild bird becomes infected with an influenza, 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.840 let's say a duck, a wild duck. Rob Webster says, 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:07.120 the duck is the trojan horse when it comes to 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:10.240 bird flu avian influenza. 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.000 Like it I like a semi mixed metaphor. 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.760 What he means by that is it's the secret carrier. 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:21.000 When a duck becomes infected with avian influenza at least 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:24.320 many types of avian influenza, it doesn't show symptoms, it 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:28.720 doesn't fall down. It continues to migrate and congregate with 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:37.240 other birds, carrying the virus and pooping it out into lakes, ponds, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:42.439 streams wherever it goes, depositing this little gift of virus, 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:47.080 and other birds then are susceptible to that virus when 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.440 they pick it up. And then if your chickens and 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:54.120 your geese start to fall dead, you might think about 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:56.640 that trojan horse in the form of a duck that 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:58.080 came through and brought that virus. 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.600 Okay, so now it's gone from bird to bird. How 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:02.959 does it go from bird to mammal? 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:08.680 A virus such as influenza gets into animal cells by 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:13.480 attaching to particular receptors on the surface of those cells. 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.920 In birds, it attaches to a particular kind of receptor. 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:24.560 Humans have a different kind of receptor. Pigs have both 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:29.439 the bird like and the mammalian receptor. So a pig 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.800 can become infected with a virus that is adapted to 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:36.319 attaching to the bird receptor, and then while it's multiplying 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:41.800 in the pig, that virus can evolve to be able 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:45.000 to attach also to the mammal type receptor. When it 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.640 comes out of the pigs, it's capable of infecting humans. 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:55.240 Ah, so it's easy for a pig to get bird flu, 0:09:55.520 --> 0:10:00.400 and pigs are this sort of mixing vessel basically, where 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:04.719 a bird flu can mutate into a flu that can 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.840 infect other kinds of mammals, including humans. That's right, Okay, 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:11.840 So I think now we have a really good base 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:15.440 of knowledge to talk about H five N one, this 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:21.920 strain of flu that is currently infecting birds. First, tell 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.400 me the scope of it, like how much is it 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:27.160 infecting birds? How many birds is it infecting? 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:33.840 Well, this version of H five N one for the 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.200 last couple of years has been circling the planet. It's 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.880 probably killing millions of wild birds. And if and when 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:45.080 it gets into those bird species, wildbird species that are endangered, 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:50.880 like the hooping crane with nine hundred individuals on the planet, 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:57.720 or the California condor with maybe three hundred individuals, it 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.200 has the potential to knock those out entirely, to drive 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:03.680 both of those species over the brink of extinction. 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:06.439 You've described what's happening with age five in one as 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.680 a kind of pandemic that is happening right now. 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:14.000 Yes, for birds, For wild birds, it's a pandemic, and 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:18.480 for domestic birds it's a pandemic. If you have a 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.240 million chickens on a poultry farm and the bird flu 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:23.800 comes in by way of a duck that happens to 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.960 come and poop in their water trough and some of 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:30.120 those chickens get infected, that virus can spread through those 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:34.360 million chickens very quickly, which means billions and billions and 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:39.760 trillions and trillions of viral particles replicating. Each time the 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:43.840 virus replicates itself, there's a potential for it to make mistakes, 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:49.080 to have a mutation, a random mutation, and several of 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:55.040 those random mutations can create a virus that can infect 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.800 the guy who's cleaning out the cages. So the fact 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:03.120 that we have thirty three billion chickens on this planet 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.800 at a given moment means that there is this huge 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:12.400 petri dish for the encouragement of evolution in the bird 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:18.000 flu virus. Millions of birds in poultry operations around the 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:22.720 world have either died or been killed preventively to stop 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:27.200 the spread of this this virus in commercial operations. 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.719 And infections of people have been thankfully rare so far, Yes, 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.120 they have been rare. Right And crucially, there's no evidence 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:37.520 that it can go from person to person. It just 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.120 goes from bird to person when people are working very 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:41.439 very closely with birds. 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:45.280 So far, Yes, that is being watched very carefully, although 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:50.319 probably not as carefully as it should be watched. There 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:54.880 is such a randomness, such an element of randomness involved 0:12:54.920 --> 0:13:01.439 in influenza evolution, that you can know what its capacity 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:06.280 to evolve quickly is, but you can't say what's going 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:07.120 to happen tomorrow. 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.040 Plainly, the terrible day that we hope will not come 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:15.560 is when there is demonstrated human to human transmission of 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:21.200 H five and one short of that, what should I 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.240 look out for, like, as a person who wants to 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.120 be well informed about this, Like, what's the signal that 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:31.240 I need to, you know, buy some bottle of water 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:32.640 and lock the door. 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:36.920 Well, one of the signals that is increasing in volume 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:41.719 is the infection of mammals with H five N one 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.720 bird flu. So when you see another story about well, 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:49.720 bird flu just killed another porpoise, bird flu just killed 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:57.720 another dolphin, another seal. That is a warning alarm, and 0:13:57.760 --> 0:13:59.959 the more it happens, the loud of the alarm gain. 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:17.640 We'll be back with more in just a minute. My 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.040 guest for the second half of the show is Wendy 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.200 per Year. She's a molecular virologist at the Coming School 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.920 of Veterinary Medicine at Tuffts University and her job is 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:31.040 looking out for that key warning sign that David Kwaman 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:34.640 was talking about. She studies wild mammals to try and 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:37.680 detect when they're being infected with H five N one. 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:40.240 It's H five N one two three four four B. 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:42.720 It's like it's very it just rolls off the tongue right. 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:46.480 Wendy told me about a moment last spring when she 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.640 got an alarming phone call. It came from Linda Dohity, 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.360 who runs an organization called Marine Mammals of Maine. 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:54.520 So she called me as I was pulling into my 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.640 parking spot and she's like, Wendy, I think we might 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:02.320 have a problem. We have some seals that are are 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:06.840 coming in. They're showing really strong respiratory signs like I'm 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.480 really nervous that high path has arrived here in the seals. 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:16.440 High path means high pathogenicity, which means bad flu strains 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:17.640 like H five N one. 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:20.920 Honestly, this kind of felt like our mission impossible moment, 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.600 so I instructed her to overnight samples to me. So 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:29.400 she has all of the supplies in house there of 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:31.920 the different vials that we need, and it's really it's 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.240 the same exact stuff that we all have used doing 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:38.080 COVID screening, so it's you know, they get swabbed, it 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:41.840 goes into a viral transport media into a little tube, but. 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:44.240 From a seal, so they're sticking like a Q tip 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:45.280 up the seals nose. 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:50.040 Yes, so we stick Q tips up the seals nose. 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.480 So we do nasal samples and rectal samples, which thankfully 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:57.080 we haven't done with humans. And those all came to 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.600 me overnight and we immediately ran those samples as soon 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.280 as they arrived here in the lab, and we detected 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.400 a really strong signal for the H five N one 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:09.080 for the high path influenza. 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.240 Whendy ran the tests again just to make sure, and 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.120 she got the same result. H five N one had 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:18.360 made its way to seals along the coast of Maine. 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.360 She sounded the alarm, notified the FEDS, and fortunately this 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:26.040 outbreak passed pretty quickly, but Wendy and other scientists are 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:30.400 still worried about future outbreaks. Let's just talk about why 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:33.040 this moment is a big deal, Like, why is this 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:34.160 such an important moment? 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:37.560 So one of the major reasons is that there's a 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:40.040 lot of different forms of influenza that circulate in wildlife, 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:44.320 but when it makes that shift into mammals, because it's 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.040 usually circulating in birds, and when it shifts over into mammals, 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.120 obviously we're a mammal. So that means it is one 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.080 step closer to being of concern for human health and 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:54.160 pandemic potential. 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:57.200 It's basically it's just getting closer to us in a 0:16:57.240 --> 0:16:59.000 biological sense exactly. 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:02.000 Yeah, they're all been referred to as a as a sentinel. 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:03.960 They're able to give us a heads up of what 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.080 sort of things might be moving from birds into a mammal, 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:10.080 But not to say that the seals themselves aren't. For 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:12.080 it's not just about the human health. So it's also 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:15.040 that you know, there is concern that it was going 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:17.200 to have a very large impact on wildlife as well, 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:19.240 because this is a whole new virus that is going 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.920 into a species that hasn't seen this virus before, so 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.720 potentially they don't have the immune protection in place to 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.000 be able to handle that. So it's human health, it's 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:30.239 the animal health, it's all of it. 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:32.760 How do marine mammals get a hive in one this 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:34.840 high path flu That. 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:36.520 Is an excellent question and that is one of the 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:38.840 things that we are actively still trying to find out. 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:41.320 So there are a couple of different ways. It seems 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.159 pretty clear it's coming from wild birds. So the bird 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.440 is where the virus is circulating and it spills over 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:50.040 and makes its way into seals. So the question is 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:55.359 how exactly it could be the case that the seal 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.560 is actually consuming an infected. 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.520 Bird, eating it, yeah, eating it, Yeah. 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:03.560 And that's what we've seen a lot of terrestrial mammals 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:04.560 that that seems to be. 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.280 How I mean, do seals eat birds well. 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.400 In some cases, yes, but it is not It certainly 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.120 is not a common thing on their their venu and 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.960 given the number of seals that we saw with high 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.760 path influenza, it seems very unlikely that each of them 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:25.440 were having the unusual meal of a bird, so it 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.680 is it's the highest probability in my mind, is that 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:33.320 the virus is being shed into the environment and that 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.240 the seals are coming into contact with it, whether it 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:40.119 is bird poop on the beach and they're you know, 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:43.480 ingesting it or inhaling it that way, or we see 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.639 little bodies of water where birds are pooping in the 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.520 water there and the seals are then hanging out in 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:50.880 that water too, So that's certainly possibility. 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:55.679 I mean, it's worth noting that with birds, flu, unlike 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:58.840 in humans, is is a fegal oral. It's a like 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:01.480 a gas through intestinal right right exactly. 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:03.920 That's an important point. So in birds it's a it's 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:06.320 a gi so it's they're they're shedding it in their 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:07.320 feces and. 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.720 That's how birds spread it to each other like humans 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:13.280 get some diseases that way, like from drinking dirty water, 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:16.399 and that's the way flu works for birds, but not 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:17.640 for people exactly. 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.760 Yeah, so it's possible that that's how it's getting into 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:24.320 seals as well. Okay, it's also possible that the seals 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.240 are spreading amongst themselves once it gets into that population, 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:31.639 and that's something that is still being very actively looked at. 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.080 It's not clear yet, it's not really ruled in or 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:34.720 ruled out. 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:37.640 I mean, you mentioned that just kind of like as 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:41.160 one of several options. But that's a huge, huge, high 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:46.760 stakes question for people, right, Like the virus going from 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:50.439 birds to seals is way different than the virus going 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.080 from mammal to mammal. Right, that is a huge, huge, 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:58.240 profoundly important public health question. It absolutely is. I'm shocked, 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.280 frankly that we don't know the answer. Scared, Yeah, I know. 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:03.440 But the thing is is it's not an easy answer 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:06.960 to get because you need a pretty sizable data set 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:11.160 to really be able to say anything with confidence. And 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.720 the number of sequences that we were able to get 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:18.480 from viruses off of seals is a small enough number 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.320 that the data is still not clear. It's not really 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:23.080 convincing one way or the other. 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:29.360 So, Okay, that's the sort of abstract, high level story. 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:32.480 I also want to talk about your field work. As 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.720 I understand you go out and basically hang out with seals. 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:37.080 Tell me about that. 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.400 So we have several different sites around the Gulf of Maine. 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.360 The primary one that I personally go to is Montomoy, 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:46.320 and that is off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:48.600 What part of the year do you go to Montomoy? 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.160 The time when everybody wants to go to the islands 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:52.879 off of Cape Cod in the middle of the winter 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:58.600 January and February. Montamoi is one of my favorite places 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:01.240 on the planet. Though it's off of Cape Cod, it's 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:05.439 very remote there is there's there are no developments there, 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:09.080 there's no heat, electricity, running water. The boats go and 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.800 drop us off and we have whatever food and water 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:14.359 and safety gear we brought with us. And there is 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:17.520 an old lighthouse there. It's actually two hundred year old 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:20.520 lighthouse just had its anniversary. It hasn't been operational for 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:24.600 the last hundred years. So the Park Service is very 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.600 gracious in letting us use that as basically a base camp. 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:30.880 And it's you and a few researchers and how many seals. 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.240 Oh, lots of seals. So in the region, it's estimated 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.359 that there's probably about fifty thousand, but on Monomoy we're 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:40.400 talking a couple of thousand at that period of time. 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.240 That's a lot of seals, A lot of seals. I mean, 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:46.919 what's it smell like? 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:51.000 So the very first time that I went out to Monomoy, 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:53.360 we're all geared up and we land on the beach 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:55.439 and we start to walk over to the seals, and 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:58.960 there's this pungent smell of skunk, and I was like, oh, 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:00.960 somebody must have been spray I by skunk on there 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:02.879 like their field clothes, and we're just none of us 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:04.480 are talking about it, so I'm just gonna We're just 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:06.919 going to carry on. And then eventually I came to 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:09.399 realize that no, no, that muskie smell, that is the 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:11.919 smell of the seals. So it smells very similar to 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:13.360 skunk in my opinion. 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:17.600 What do they sound like? Is it loud like you 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:19.679 hear like a thousand seals going off. 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:25.440 During the day, Typically not at all unless they're they're 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:31.800 kind of bickering and fighting and having some territorial little battles. 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:37.040 At night time, it's sort of a consistent, low bellowing 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:39.920 that you hear in the background while you're while you're 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:42.520 trying to sleep. It's actually quite nice ambient noise. 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:46.159 It does sound a feeling that sounds better than the 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:51.439 smell certainly right. So so you're out there, what do 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:51.840 you do? 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.680 We are going out and actually capturing the pups, and 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:00.280 we focus on the pups because they are, give take, 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:02.760 about one hundred pounds as opposed to the adults, which 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:05.760 can be around eight hundred pounds. So we're able to 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:08.920 physically restrain the pups. And that's why we're there during 0:23:09.000 --> 0:23:12.080 January and February because that's the pupping season. It can 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:14.280 be somewhat comical if you didn't know what was going on. 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:17.600 You've got a bunch of scientists all geared up, and 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:21.840 we are crawling through army crawl style through the dunes 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:24.760 to sneak up on a seal pup and put this 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:28.840 bag over the seal that we then capture it, and 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:33.439 we're doing sample collections. We're doing measurements to look for 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:37.639 just the overall health of the animals, and then we 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:39.920 put a tag on them. In some cases we put 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:42.280 on a satellite tag so we can actually follow their 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:45.720 movement and then we release them and all of that 0:23:45.760 --> 0:23:49.680 can happen and as quickly as six minutes, and then 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:52.159 we max it out at twenty minutes. So if we 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:54.119 hit twenty minutes, we release the seal. 0:23:54.800 --> 0:23:56.679 So when you go out in the winter and you 0:23:56.720 --> 0:24:03.359 are swabbing baby seals, like you are doing the sentinel work, 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:05.880 you're like out there looking for H five in one 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:09.680